


The End of All Things

by rosatremaine



Category: Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-12 05:12:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 24
Words: 53,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13540398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosatremaine/pseuds/rosatremaine
Summary: Battered by the political tides of Ragnarok and rejected by the realm he tried to rule, Loki returns to Midgard as a last resort, hoping to mend his relationship with the one person left who might care about him - but things are not quite as they seem.





	1. For They Died and Had Trees to Hang Upon (Introduction)

Darkness came as a relief once the burning apocalyptic fires were left behind - no more searing heat on his tired, aching skin, no more battle cries or screams of rage ringing in his ears, no more weapons aimed at his head. He breathed, slowly at first, attempting to assess the situation. The dark, though welcome, was disorienting. He could see nothing, hear nothing, and only by some freak of his natural abilities could he feel a tiny breeze on his skin. It was barely more than a chilly breath, really. This blackness was new. He was more accustomed to the swirling patterns of the back-alleys that twisted and connected through the complex fabric of time and space. They reminded him of a time when as a child he had watched the master-weavers at work in the Court of Asgard, making a new tapestry for the great hall. The picture was clear and easy to see on the front of the fabric, but when he had climbed under the looms to watch how they worked, all that had been visible was a tangled mass of coloured threads. Slowly, as he'd continued watching, however, he had begun to be able to pick out the lines and forms of the pattern from the other side. The pathways that he frequented were likewise tangled and messy to the inexperienced eye, but just like the master-weavers, Loki was good at what he did. Now, though, the familiar patterns and colours, the energy signatures he was used to seeing, were gone, lost in a sea of black. This eerie emptiness was unsettling.

It felt like an eternity that he hung there suspended in something that wasn't space, or even subspace, but the very back of the universe, what you'd see if you could turn it over like a great, mind-boggling tapestry. Then suddenly the energies kicked in, accelerating him wildly through a blinding sheet of white light, and spat him out with no ceremony whatsoever.  
He lay on the ground, floored by the brightness, panting as he grasped vainly for the air. Something wasn't right. He had travelled this route many times before – why did it feel so wrong? He stared up at the stars, hoping for some explanation, but of course none was forthcoming. They were her stars, after all, not his. He wasn't even sure what his stars looked like anymore. With some difficulty he shook the feeling of uncertainty off, and rose to his feet rather shakily, wrapping his long, dark leather coat more securely around him. The journey appeared to have very nearly pulled it off his back. He supposed he was lucky that it was only his coat that had been pulled off, and not his skin.

He staggered to begin with, reeling and lurching like a drunkard. He gritted his teeth against the indignity. Thankfully no-one else was present to witness his stupid helplessness. The End of All Things had taken its toll on him, but at least he was still alive. So many others had not survived, their lives winking out like dying stars, a shattering supernova of destruction when one witnessed it at close range. His own body was battered and sore, but he had escaped by the skin of his teeth. Magic was good for something after all, it seemed. It wasn't everyone who could say that they'd been at the very epicentre of the apocalypse and survived to tell the tale.  
Now, in his time of need, he was prepared to do what he had never done in his life – ask forgiveness from a person highly unlikely to give it. She wasn't actually at the top of the list of People Who Would Rather Throw Themselves Into Space Than Offer Loki Help, but she was probably in the top five. Begging was not his style at all, but sometimes when desperation calls, one has to swallow one's pride, no matter how bitter it tastes.  
A ghost of his once-ready smirk rose to his lips. He hoped his silver tongue would not fail him this time. He was going to need all its power to save him now.


	2. Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot

Well, it was Midgard. The winter season, apparently - some time in the late evening, judging by the inky sky and the bright stars. It was cold; not that that in itself had ever bothered him, but he was feeling oddly weakened, and still the indefinable sensation of something, somewhere, being deeply wrong, would not leave him. He managed to get his limbs to obey him properly after some effort, and began to pick his way very carefully down a frosty lane toward the light he could see. He trudged toward it, energy sapping from him with every step. It was most peculiar. Evidently the journey had taken more power from him than usual, for some reason.   
The lane was bumpy with stones and tufts of crisp frozen grass, and in the shallow hollows were icy patches where puddles had succumbed to the night's temperature drop. It was, in short, a typical badly maintained English country track, and it was the first actual tangible evidence he had that something had gone wrong. If he'd ended up where he was intending to land, he would be dodging black cabs and red buses under the harsh orange light of a thousand streetlamps, not avoiding ice patches and feeling his way up a lane in the dark.   
Still, the faint warm light of a building at the end of the lane was the best he could do right now, and surely some local wight would be able to tell him how far off course he was, presuming said wight wasn't completely sozzled on bad whisky. Loki couldn't be _that_ far from London. 

The whisky thought turned out to be a lot closer to the truth than he had intended. The light belonged to a small stone-built pub with a thatched roof, with a hanging wooden sign outside that appeared to state the name of the establishment as "The Green rag". A secondary examination of the peeling paint revealed a picture of an improbably viridian-hued reptilian being stabbed by a dubious looking character in a tin suit. A brass-blonde woman wearing diaphanous robes and a startled expression watched from her uncomfortable perch on a nearby rock, and the general impression was no doubt meant to be heroic. It just annoyed Loki, whose chest was aching far more than it should just from wintry air. Pain, though something he was used to, invariably made him irritable as Hel. (Or rather, Hela was as irritable as Loki. Some things are more heritable than others.)

"Green Dragon", he grumbled. "What rubbish. Midgard's dragons were all rust and yellow."   
Midgard never had been good at facts. 

He opened the door to the pub and walked in without really giving thought to his appearance. Fortunately, most of the inhabitants of the bar were already too smashed to notice anything weird about a tall, dishevelled man with preternaturally pale skin and a now rather dirty long leather coat. One of them, a stoutish bearded fellow, tried abortively to talk to him, but the clearest thought in the man's Scotch-fuddled head was suddenly a vision of himself being thrown across the bar, so he stepped back from the stranger in a hurry and ordered another double. 

Loki peered around the dimly-lit room, searching for anyone who looked half sober and sane enough to be of use. The beams in the ceiling were dark oak, and low enough to be a problem for the smallest of Jotnar; Loki had to concentrate hard to avoid hitting his head. It was worse than a dwarven smithy.   
He cautiously rounded another corner in the old-fashioned maze of brick walls and wooden panelling, and had to pull himself up sharply on seeing the occupant of the table directly opposite.   
She sat alone, her white-blonde hair half hiding her face from his view, a glass full of deep red wine winking at her from the tabletop. He would know her anywhere, in any time, in any world. _Sol_. 

His heart was pounding with a mixture of shock, apprehension, and excitement at seeing her in this unexpected, wrong place. He had not seen her for some time, and he was ashamed to admit that he wasn't really looking forward to explaining himself to her. The last time they had really seen each other was that dreadful day when they'd had a spectacular row which ended in him stalking out of her life in a swirl of angry green. He hadn't really meant to walk out of her life and never return, but after that everything had started to go wrong in Asgard, and he hadn't been able to leave the Realm Eternal. Now he was going to have to try to apologize, which had never come easy to him, at least not when he was being sincere.   
He was practically shaking by the time he reached her table and coughed by way of introduction. 

He expected anger; he expected accusation, possibly even a small amount of violence – so the look of utter blankness set him quite off-balance.

"Do I know you?" She was polite, reserved, more distant than he'd ever known her. She was normally not one to stick to rigid politeness when she was angry about something. No, Sol would be more likely to break her knuckles on your jaw if she was furious with you, not pretend she didn't know who you were. Apparently he had been away so long that she had reached a level of wrath that he'd never witnessed before.

He tried to smile, and failed. "I know it has been far too long. I am sorry," that word inevitably stuck in his throat even when it was true, "but things have happened that…"

She frowned. Not an angry frown, just a confused one. "I'm really sorry, I don't remember ever meeting you."

This time he did smile. Perhaps she had learned something from him after all. "Very well, Sol, I suppose you are entitled to your revenge, however petty it may be."

The effect of this was not quite what he had anticipated. She stood up abruptly, and her hands came up in a defensive gesture. "How do you know my name? Nobody ever called me Sol except my father."

The feeling of wrongness was now so strong that Loki was beginning to feel dizzy. "I've called you Sol for years, but if you prefer not to be reminded of that, I will call you by your full name."

"Reminded? Look, Mr Whoever You Are, I have no recollection of meeting you… OH." She broke off with a sudden narrowing of her ice-blue eyes. "I know what this is. Look, I appreciate your enjoyment of my work, and I'm flattered you wanted to thank me in person, but please go away now, because however much you beg you are NOT going to get a photograph with me, and I'm sorry I haven't replied to your letters or emails but I've been totally snowed under, and in fact I'm on holiday and HOW did you find me here?" She ended this torrent of nonsense on a note of challenging suspicion.

"Photograph? I do not need a photograph," said Loki, latching onto the one thing that made sense to him. Ironic that it was also the one reference to Midgardian technology.

She relaxed very slightly. "Oh. Well, that's a relief. I assumed you were a fan."

His puzzlement must have shown on his face, because she plunged into a messy explanation. "You're not? Oh, I'm so sorry. I must have sounded horribly rude, but you see I'm rather sick of it all. I published five scientific books and got almost nowhere, and then I broke my leg and got so bored that I wrote that wretched adventure novel, and suddenly everyone loves me and I get stalked by fans who want to tell me how my silly story changed their lives!"

Loki blinked. He must have been away even longer than he had thought. "I did not know you wrote books.” His eyes were doing something strange, he supposed because of the travelling and the energy it had taken. Still, he did not usually have so much trouble focusing them. His head was not exactly aching, but it felt peculiar, fuzzy and rather as though the world was spinning too quickly for his brain to process.

“Oh, my God!” She was staring at him with wide, horrified eyes. "You're bleeding!"

He looked down, crinkling his brow. She was quite correct. The complicated leather of his gilet was stained with a rapidly growing dark patch. That would explain the ache in his chest and the weird feeling in his head, of course.

"So I am," he said, and suddenly there was a rushing in his ears, and then ... nothing.


	3. All Around Me Are Familiar Faces

_The fires rage with a pure, vengeful heat that threatens to melt the very flesh from his bones. He stands staring at the body at his feet, accusing eyes surrounding him, yet still he stands tall, because he is a prince. In fact for some time now he has been a king. The fact that he was impersonating someone else is, of course, irrelevant.  
And then the voices begin._

_"You killed him," they hiss. "Balder, your own brother. Murderer. Murderer."_

_"NOT my brother!" he spits back, filled with indignation at their venom. "I have no brother."_

_"Part of the family that raised you! Brother in all but blood. And you have killed him."_

_"Have I not the right to defend myself and the realm I rule? He was behind this insurrection. He threatened everything we are. Rebel organizations must be cut off at the head, otherwise they simply keep growing. This is a basic tenet of rulership. One must protect the kingdom no matter the cost."_

_"You cannot talk your way out of it this time, Frost Giant. He too was our prince, and more worthy of that title than you ever were."_

_"A lost princeling none of you had even heard of until a short time ago? You fickle creatures. Only a few years ago it was Thor you wanted on the throne, and now you mourn the loss of this idiot, insubordinate child as your future monarch?"_

_"Even that would be better than obeying YOU!"_

_The hisses are turning to shouts, the shouts to roars as Asgard howls for the blood of its rejected prince.  
The fire has made it impossible for him to sustain any illusion, which is how this situation arose in the first place. Not for the first time, he curses his Jotun ancestry. A true prince of Asgard would have no issue with the flame, but for him it is torture - such a simple thing as remaining vertical and walking slowly takes a supreme amount of effort. Somehow he pushes himself beyond even his own limits, lashing out at the weapons brandished under his very nose. But the heat has made him slow, and some of them meet their mark. With his seiðr weakened, the wounds are excruciating. He grits his teeth, clamping his jaw shut so as to allow the whimpers of pain no egress. He knows what this is. It was foretold many centuries ago. How did the rhyme go? _

_'Heat and cold, green and gold, Ragnarok be thus foretold...'_

_No wonder everyone mistrusted him from the very beginning. Even his favourite colours were prophesied. His eyes gleam with a sarcastic, mischievous humour, even now as the realm he once called home is ripping itself apart. No-one can say he does things by halves, even when it comes to accidentally fulfilling prophecies.  
His body trembles, but he holds himself as steady as he can, turning to give them one last mocking grin before he vanishes from before their hate-filled eyes. It takes every bit of residual strength he has, but he manages to stay invisible until he is out of their view. He makes his way painfully to the crack in the rock he discovered so many years ago to be a doorway to Midgard. Sol is one of possibly two people in the universe that he feels he can trust to any extent. Trust is a problem with him, slightly ironic for the master of illusion and misdirection. He does not want to go to her, but she is the only person he can think of to ask for shelter. Mainly because she is the only person he trusts who doesn't believe him dead. _

_The fire makes his eyes water. It is everywhere, consuming the wreckage of homes and wagons, swallowing trees in its deadly mouth, licking at the edges of the waters, leaping higher and higher and threatening to devour every last stone that once made Asgard the jewel of the Nine Realms.  
He enters the rock, and is suddenly engulfed in darkness. The fires cannot follow him here. The political upheaval, the sound of utter destruction as the Realm Eternal claws itself to ribbons, and the constant baying of the unhappy masses are all gone, lost in the depth of the pathway to hope. But the feeling of inadequacy never leaves him, never fades, never heals, and it aches worse than the wounds he now endures. _

 

Loki woke with a gasp, his eyes flying open to see a sterile white ceiling above him. He lay still, trying to assess not only his surroundings but also his physical condition. It did not feel good. For some reason his mind was oddly foggy, but through the fog he was aware of a distinct pain arcing around in his body. He tried to move, but found to his disgust that he was too weak to do so to any effect. There was something stuck in his hand - a tube, attached somehow to the space just above his knuckles. He frowned at it. 

"Where am I?" It was meant to be a demand, but it came out as more of a pathetic whine. He scowled. 

A woman in a strange, insipid blue button-through dress came hurrying over to him, peering into his face with a nauseating smile. "Oh, you're awake! I'll get your cousin for you."  
And she bustled off just as he was opening his mouth to deny any knowledge of a cousin.

He shut his eyes, preparing for the worst.

"I thought you said he was awake?"

His eyes snapped open. _Sol._  
She was standing next to what he now identified as a bed on which he was currently lying prone. Her hair was a mess, she was wearing a perfectly awful oversized blue woollen garment on her top half, and she looked tired, but he had honestly never been happier to see her.

"Sol," he croaked. His voice, normally so smooth and rich, sounded rusty.

Her eyes were full of concern, but she couldn't seem to resist beginning with a mild joke. "I see you're back in the land of the living. Was heaven too boring for you?"

"Heaven?" he muttered. "I think we both know there's not much chance of my ending up there."

Apparently she took this as a joke in response to her own. "I'm very glad to see you're still with us. You really scared me. I've never had anyone collapse on me before, and as nice as it is to be able to boast about the hot guy who fell at my feet, I'd rather he didn't die in the process!"

Loki frowned. He was struggling to keep up with her. "I'll not die, not this time at any rate."

"I'll hold you to that. But seriously, what happened to you? The doctor says you have some very nasty wounds."

"I was… involved in an accident…" said Loki, desperately scrambling for scraps of memory about the Midgardian way of life. Although he had spent quite a lot of time here over the last few years, he could not say he had ever taken very much notice of the finer points of their doubtful culture. Loki did not like to waste brain-space on things he considered unimportant. He now wished he had paid more attention.

"And you decided to come into a country pub straight afterwards - where I just _happened_ to be visiting on my extremely top-secret holiday - and talk to me? People don't walk away from the sort of accident that causes that level of damage."

"I was in shock," he said, clutching with relief at a memory of something he had read during one of his visits. He had been particularly bored, and had been casting a cursory eye over a book of Midgardian medicine. "Shock does odd things to a person, I believe."

She didn't look convinced, and he could not really blame her – as explanations went, that was by no means his best. But it would have to suffice, because he was too exhausted and too fuzzy-headed to do better.  
Thankfully she did not pursue the subject further. "You didn't have any ID or personal information of any kind… it's been quite awkward."

His eyes widened. "What did you tell them?"

She lowered her voice, looking a little sheepish. "Well… the fact is, I told them you were my cousin. It was the only way they'd let me hang around and wait for you to wake up. I didn't want you to come round in here without anyone you knew. I know we've only just met officially so I don't exactly count, but at least I'm a familiar face."

"Sol… what is happening?" He knew he sounded like a lost child, but he was past caring now.

She looked at him sympathetically for a moment, and then did something totally unexpected – she reached out her hand and took his. He stared down at their hands blankly, feeling a strange, burning pressure at the back of his eyes. To his horror, a large teardrop gathered on his lower lashes, teetering damply before taking the plunge and tumbling down his cheek. He glared at the white cover of the bed, trying to pull himself together. This was not the way for a prince to act. It was not what was expected of a monster, either. In fact, this ridiculous behaviour didn't fit with any of the things he was supposed to be. Of course, he was still in shock. That was all it was. A bizarre emotional response to a stupid physical problem. It had nothing to do with the fact that nobody had touched him in sympathy or affection for a very long time. Nothing whatsoever.

"Are you ok?" Her voice sounded concerned, but he could not raise his eyes to hers, not yet. He could not let her see the pain in his eyes; that would give her far too much of a hold on him. He trusted her – she was Sol – but not that much. Nobody was ever allowed to see so deeply into his black, unhappy soul. He pulled his hand away with a twitch of annoyance. Even he wasn't quite sure what the annoyance hid, but it might have been fear.

Fortunately she seemed to require no answer, chastising herself immediately. "I'm an idiot – of course you're not ok. I'm not saying I necessarily believe the accident story, but there's no denying you're pretty badly banged up. You lost so much blood while I was waiting for the ambulance to arrive, even though I did everything I could think of to try and stop the bleeding… I really thought you wouldn't make it. I'm so happy you're alive. It's bad publicity for an author's fans to start dying on her, you know," she added, but the joke apparently sounded a little hollow even to her own ears. "You probably think I'm a heartless bitch to be cracking jokes while you're lying there with a bloody great hole in your chest – pun intended! – but I'm afraid that's how I deal with stress. Generally speaking, the worse things are and the more anxious I am, the more I hide behind irony."

He had composed himself enough to shoot her a wide stare at this. The Sol he knew did not respond to trauma in this way, but he understood the reaction perfectly because he recognized it as his own. This sudden insight into himself unsettled him.  
"It does not offend me," he managed to say.

She smiled. "Then we'll be alright. I'd better leave you now –you need rest, and me jabbering on at you isn't going to be conducive to healing!"  
She turned to go, but then evidently thought of something. "By the way, if anyone asks, your name's Daniel. Daniel Harrington."

"Daniel Harrington?" He weighed the words with his tongue in faint disgust.

She shrugged. "It was the best I could come up with at short notice. Don't complain too much. At least it's more interesting than John Smith."

Midgardian humour. He rolled his eyes.

She smiled again. "Are you feeling better? You just pulled a very expressive face."

"I am allowed to do so," he said, a little defensively. "It is my face, after all."

"And it's a very nice one," she replied, taking the wind totally out of his sails. Before he could think of anything cutting to say in reply, she had bid him farewell and breezed out of the room.

He lost himself in thought. This situation was most peculiar. Sol _was_ Sol, but she said and did things in a very un-Sol-like manner. He cast his mind back to various things she had said over the course of their relatively brief conversations. She kept saying things that implied she truly did not know him. But how was that possible? He had not been away for as long as that – only a few Midgardian years. It had not even been so much as a decade, he was sure of it. She had not aged enough, anyway. Something extraordinary was going on here, and he wanted to know what it was. Mind control? But he knew the signs of that only too well, and she exhibited none. Had her memory been wiped somehow? He knew such a thing could be done – in fact, on his better days he could even do it himself – but it seemed unlikely, because as far as he was aware, nobody knew of his association with her. And surely, if someone wanted to capture him, they would have used her to trap him with memories intact. What is the point of using bait that doesn't remember the victim? He shook his head over the puzzle. For now it was beyond him. He was tired. So very tired. He would wait until she visited again, and then he would try to find out more. For now, unusually for him, all he wanted was to sleep.


	4. Don't Get Too Close - It's Dark Inside

_It is cold, dark and suffocating at the bottom of the Void._

_Their hissing, raspy whispers encircle him – he cannot escape. They twist everything already broken within him until even he can barely recognize himself. He, the liar, no longer able to remember truth – what a delightful irony! He wants to laugh, but the sound that escapes his chapped lips is an ugly, wild noise quite unlike his own soft chuckle. He can just about recall a time when he revelled in mischief almost purely for the fun of it, when his laughs were genuine and his soul wasn't this fractured._

_Unless that was someone else._

_Perhaps it was._

_He isn't certain anymore._

_The one thing that drives him still, the one solidly real knowledge that stabs like a spear through the morass of confusion and pain, is his need for recognition. His desperation, fuelled by anger and betrayal, keeps him from going under, and he feeds it constantly. Every now and then a little suspicious doubt surfaces in his whirling head, namely, that They seem to want him to feed it… but repeatedly he shoves the doubt to the back of his mind. His hurt and rage are the only things keeping him alive, and he will be damned before he gives them up._

_But he is damned, after all._

_"You are damned", whisper the voices, sounding gradually less and less like Them and more and more like his false family. "You are damned."_

_"I was a king!" he protests, lack of validation constricting his throat and threatening to release a cascade of hot tears. He whips himself into a dark, sharp reactive fury._

_"Laufey's son," comes the reply, hissed from the edges of the abyss. "The nowhere child. Left to die. That was your true destiny."_

_Echoes float around his brain, taunting, knifing. "Stop this madness. Come home. Give up this poisonous dream…"_

_"It's not my dream anymore – it's Theirs!" he screams, but no sound emerges. He is finding it hard to breathe, and the sounds of his rough, ragged breath startle him with their volume. He has to remind himself to keep up the steady rhythm needed for life._

_In…_

_Out..._

_In…_

_Out…_

_He is sweating, a damp sheen coating his face. His eyes feel bruised. His body shakes as something cold pierces him to the very depth of his being. He realizes with a sense of despair that it is his own darkness, leaching everything that was once good out of him through his veins. Thor's face swims before his tear-blurred vision, and his voice rumbles with those most painful of words, "That hope no longer exists…"_

_And then, eerily, his own voice drifts back to him. "See you in hell, monster."_

His dreams were disturbing, an odd combination of real memories and tense, illogical fantasy that made his subconscious mind curl in on itself, trying to protect itself from the pain and insanity. He gradually resurfaced to the knowledge that his head ached like hell and the aridity of his mouth could probably give Muspelheim a run for its money. He opened his eyes with a protesting groan.

She was there again. He noticed, with a jolt of anxiety, the large dark shadows under her eyes. Relief sparked through her face on seeing that he was awake.

"Oh God, I've been so worried about you."

He felt his brows knitting themselves together. 

"You've been unconscious for two days," she explained. "It seems you're allergic to the painkillers."

"Two days!" That would, he supposed, explain the change in her attire. She had swapped the perfectly awful blue woollen thing for a much more aesthetically pleasing green tunic and a black padded gilet to keep out the cold. He dredged up every last shred of medical knowledge he had ever taken in. "Pain killer. An allergy? I did not know."

"They had to take the IV out. You must be in awful pain. I'm so sorry."

He _was_ in pain, but strangely enough he almost preferred that to the fuzzy, sleepy feeling. He felt more like himself now, sharper, quicker, with a brain that no longer felt as if it was wrapped in a layer of cloud.

"I'll survive. Surprisingly the thing that is at present causing most discomfort is a raging thirst. Is there any water on that table?"

There was; she poured him a glass, and put it into his hand with great care. He took a sip, slow and delicate. It felt like a miracle. He would never have imagined such bliss from something so simple, so humble as a glass of water. A stray quotation floated across his consciousness, How are the mighty fallen! His lips twisted in something that was not quite a smirk. Who would have thought that one day Loki, prince of Asgard, whose towering intellect matched his physical height, the one who had so proudly declared himself a god when threatened by ignorant, foolish mortals, would be so bowled over by the sensations caused by a glass of water?

Sol was watching him again. She did that a lot. "So are you going to tell me your actual name?"

He breathed in the wrong place, choked, coughed; she took the glass from him hastily, and attempted to soothe him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

He rolled his eyes despite the sudden pain from his chest. "At any other time I'd accept your incessant apologies, but just now they are more irritating than helpful. Please stop."

She stopped. Her eyebrow flew up; she said, "Is that your way of telling me not to worry? Because if it is, allow me to tell you that it sucks!"

He almost smiled. "You asked me my name, I believe?"

She nodded.

He took a deep breath. He hadn't expected this to be so difficult. "I am Loki. Of… no place in particular."

He waited for the moment of revelation. It never came. She looked interested, that was all.

"Are you Scandinavian?"

"Not exactly," he said cautiously, bewildered by her total lack of recognition. Even if she didn't remember him from their association, she should at least know the name.

"Oh. Your name just sounds Scandinavian, that's all." There was a very brief pause, then she offered, "I'm Norwegian myself. At least my family is. Or was. A long time ago. I'm quite boringly English in reality. It just explains my funny name."

"Sol… do you truly not remember me?" He knew he should not ask, but he couldn't resist it. His mystification and curiosity were too great.

Her eyes were suddenly full of wary confusion. "Why do you keep saying things like that? It's true I've met a lot of people, but even so I'm fairly sure I would remember you!" 

"Perhaps I am still suffering the effects of shock," he said quietly, offering her a way out of the labyrinth this conversation had so quickly become.

"You can't blame everything on shock," she said, startling him by refusing the easy offer and plunging headfirst back into the midst of the maze. "You've been pretty insistent all the way along. Something strange is going on here."

She was certainly correct about that.

"So, Loki…why did you come to see me?"

"I thought we agreed I stumbled into that tavern by chance after the accident?" He wanted to bite out his tongue. Why, by all that blazed in the Nine, why could he not simply be silent and stop her from speculating?

"Agreement suggests choice," she replied, "and I don't remember being given a choice. You offered that as your cover story, and I didn't argue too much at the time because you looked like you were about to give up the ghost any second. I don't like fighting with dying men."

"And you think I look better today?" He was incredulous.

She tilted her head to one side, considering. "Yes and no. On the whole I think you look pretty good for a man who's been out of it for fifty-one hours. But you seemed to be having nightmares during the last part of it."

His jaw hardened. "Did I speak?"

"You mumbled a fair bit. I couldn't really catch what you were saying, though. Don't worry, I didn't overhear any national secrets."

"Any secrets I might have would far outweigh anything you could imagine," he said. _Damn it._

"I assume you are more than you appear, then?" she said, as if her suspicions had been confirmed.

"Isn't everyone?" he managed to deflect.

She stared at him thoughtfully. "What are you going to do when you get out of hospital? You must have had a reason to come and talk to me. Unless you really are just a fan."

He had not thought of that. He hadn't really thought beyond the reunion he had envisioned.

"Have you got somewhere to go? I only ask because although I imagine it's customary for someone like you not to have any ID, you don't seem to have any money either. By the way, that coat of yours has seen better days. Shame. I should imagine it was rather nice when it was new. Lovely leather."

"I… have nowhere," he said. It was more true than she realized.

"I have a caravan in my garden," she said, unexpectedly.

 

He blinked. "A caravan…"

"…In my garden. Yes. I know it won't be what you're used to, but you could sleep in it for a while until you get yourself sorted out. If you like. Just… don't start a gun battle in my garden, or anything like that. Please."

He frowned. "I'm not sure what you think I am, but…"

She grinned, that wide, dimpled radiance that sent a shock to his system. He had forgotten how joyful and potent that particular smile could be. "Oh don't mind me, I'm just joking around with you. I'm serious about the caravan, though. You would be entirely welcome - _Mr Bond_."

 _A cultural reference_ , he thought grimly, and ignored it.


	5. We Were Hovering Without a Home

Loki shut his eyes after she left. His head was plagued by an intermittent throbbing ache just behind his eyebrows, as if his forehead was being manhandled by someone with very hard fingers and a grudge. He knew why it was. Loki was always, _always_ on top of the situation, even if the only way to manifest that was to make a snide comment or a sardonic jibe. He detested loss of control, and he was well aware that he had felt this degree of helplessness only twice before – once while writhing in the Void, and once during the unspeakably awful period when he wasn't dead on Svartalfheim. He loathed it. He was weak, wounded, sick with horrible pain, drained of all his energy and power, stuck in an uncomfortable bed and completely at the mercy of the vampires and vultures Midgard so fondly thought of as healers, who stuck him with needles until he felt like a sentient pincushion and asked him inane questions in syrupy tones that set his teeth on edge worse than tart apples. But even more disturbing than his physical weakness and dependence was the stark fact that there was so much that didn't make sense, and he felt a deep frustration because even despite the improvement effected by the removal of the pain killer, his brain was still not quite up to its usual working standard. A jumble of thoughts danced behind his eyelids, and he was attempting to sort them out when he heard Sol returning. Her footsteps were unmistakable to him now, but she seemed to be in a hurry. Had she left one of her belongings behind?

"Loki."

His eyes opened immediately. Her pointed face was taut, and her whole body radiated tension. "We have to get out of here." It was an announcement, a rushed, hushed declaration that brooked no argument.

"Why?" Loki, unfortunately, had never been very good at not arguing. 

"I don't know what exactly is going on, but there are some extremely tough-looking people in suits and sunglasses who just arrived at the hospital, and I overheard the nurses telling them where you are. So come on, we have to go."

 _S.H.I.E.L.D._ , he thought. What he said was, "Why are you doing this?"

She stared at him as if he'd just asked the most ridiculous question in the universe. "Look, I may not know much about you or what's happening here – mainly because you won't tell me anything – but I do know toughs when I see them, and there is no way I'm letting them get hold of you while you're in this condition. Plus I've never been overly fond of the Powers That Be. People who looked very much like those guys downstairs once did appalling things to my dad because they thought he had information they wanted. He didn't, but by the time they realized he was telling the truth, it was too late. He never really recovered from it."

He looked at her, not even attempting to process what she had just said, and totally unable to decide what to do. _Pull yourself together! You used to be counsel to your pig-headed brother - you can make this decision!_  
"You do realize that if we do this, not only will you be lumbered with…" he gestured to himself with an expression of disgust, "the walking wounded… but those people will no doubt come after you as well."

"You think I give a highly-coloured damn about that? I couldn't forgive myself if I just stood by and let them drag you off to their lair."

"Lair?" He couldn't suppress a faint smile.

"We have to hurry," she insisted, dragging the blankets off him. He sat up, slowly, painfully. He was dressed in a very fetching white… _thing_ … that did not cover nearly as much of his body as he would have wished. It was incredibly humiliating. Perhaps that was how the Midgardian 'healing' system worked – the patients got well through sheer willpower in order to curtail this degrading nonsense. 

Sol didn't appear to notice his discomfort. She grabbed a nearby contraption that looked like an instrument of torture, with wheels, a hammock-seat, and a selection of straps and buckles which Loki viewed with deep suspicion, and pushed it in his general direction.

It squeaked. He stared. Surely she didn't expect…?

"Come on," she said through her teeth. "What are you glaring at it for? It's a wheelchair, it's not going to bite you."

He swung his long legs over the side of the bed, unable to repress the groan of pain that resulted from the movement. And then her hands were on him, tugging, supporting, pushing, helping. Somehow he landed in the hammock-seat, an ignominious bundle of bone and sinew, and she thrust an open-knit wool blanket into his lap. He recognized it as having resided palely at the foot of his bed. It was a disgusting yellowish colour, and he frowned at it, but she was already doing something with his feet, and didn't see the disapproval.

Once she had finished mauling him into the correct shape, she hastily arranged the blanket over his legs, and gave the contraption a shove. It rattled. He grunted. For all their pride in scientific advancement, Midgardians couldn't seem to help falling back on primitive mechanics.

She pushed him out of the room, and down a narrow, odd-smelling corridor. The floor was nondescript but shiny. The lighting wasn't quite steady - it flickered ever so slightly, and from various directions he could hear a faint, technological humming.

They were picking up speed now – obviously she felt that their time was short. Knowing S.H.I.E.L.D. as he did, he felt that perhaps they had a little more time than she thought, but was disinclined to say so, just in case their reactions had gained in rapidity over the years. It wasn't impossible.

"Where exactly are you planning to go?" he asked.

"We're escaping from a bunch of suited thugs; don't ask me irrelevant questions."

"I thought it was a fairly relevant inquiry!"

"The truth is I have no idea what we're going to do once we get out of here. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

He couldn't reconcile this frankly worrying attribute with the Sol he had once known. It was rapidly dawning on him that this Sol was far more drastically different than he had at first thought.

"I'm not usually this disorganized," she added, as if she'd read his mind, "but in this instance I felt that speed of execution was more important than advance planning."

 _This is a strange conversation_ , he thought.

"I might have been mistaken," she said. 

She had. Racing footsteps behind them indicated the approach of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and ahead of them was something that looked very much like a dead end.

Loki felt a tight panic begin to take hold of him. The fear itself created more fear – he was unsure what was causing this reaction. He should not be afraid of them. Silly, arrogant, self-righteous mortals, most of whom played into his hands with almost unbelievable ease last time. Had it not been for that wretched green creature, he would no doubt have succeeded in his aim. So why should he fear them now?

He was jolted out of his thoughts by Sol, who twisted the wheeled chair very sharply around a corner he hadn't registered. He hissed as his elbow made sudden contact with the metal arm of the chair, causing pain to travel up his shoulder and into his chest, which was still extremely sore.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't have time to warn you."

They were hurtling down yet another corridor, toward a large metal door set into the wall at the far end.

"Where are you taking me?" He tried to sound humorous, and felt that he hadn't quite succeeded.

"Service lift," she said, succinctly, evidently with no idea that he was still totally in the dark.

She pressed a button on the wall, and the metal door swished open, revealing a tiny, square room. She shoved the wheeled chair inside, ignoring his sounds of protest. It wasn't that he was claustrophobic, but…

She pressed another button. A disembodied voice, ingratiating, smug, spoke to them. 'Doors closing.'

The door shut behind them. He really was _fine_ with small enclosed spaces.

The whole room shivered and thumped suddenly, and then Loki felt a curious and unpleasant sensation, rather as though his internal organs were attempting to climb out through his throat.

"What have you done to me, child?" he shouted, trying feebly to lift himself out of the wheeled chair. Damn his legs for not obeying him!

"Calm down!" she said, annoyingly serene. "What the hell's the matter with you? Haven't you ever been in a lift before?"

"No," he said. "I'm acquainted with the concept, but this ... rickety contraption can't be considered safe, surely?"

He noticed that there was a mirror on the wall next to them. He could see her face in it – she was frowning as if concentrating on a complex puzzle.

"Who are you? You sound English but you have very odd ideas about the effect of shock on the human system, you don't seem to have seen a wheelchair before, and you nearly go out of your mind when I put you in a lift, despite the fact that we've had elevators in England since 1823! As to 'rickety contraptions', this is a pretty standard lift, and not exactly ancient."

"I'm not sure how well you will take to the explanation," he said quietly.

"Try me."

"I am… not from around here."

"You can say that again!" she said, a spark of mischief lighting up her face.

"I'm serious. I am from another world. I can't really tell you much more than that at this moment, but suffice it to say, those 'suited thugs', as you rather aptly put it, have a definite reason for wanting to capture me."

"Like Area 51?" she asked, then seeing his look of total blankness, "Oh, never mind."

'Doors opening,' said the floating voice, sinisterly cheerful, as the metal walls groaned to a halt. 

Sol wasted no time, pushing him through the door and charging down the carpeted entrance hall.

"Am I going to come out of this still in one piece?" he asked the world at large.

"Well it's either my dreadful wheelchair-driving, or being beaten up by those people – take your pick."

"I think I'd rather take my chances with them," he deadpanned. "At least they might spare me a broken neck. Although, after our last meeting… on second thoughts, I think I'll stay where I am."

She rushed him through the automatic doors at the entrance to the hospital, and he shut his eyes against the sudden onslaught of outdoor brightness, like a bat in the caves of Asgard frightened out into the glorious golden sun. 

On opening his eyes again, he realized that they were now in a large flat area covered with some form of tar which he recognized as the same substance they insisted on using to coat their roadways. It always smelled so pungent in the summer, and people had been known to stick to it if they stood still too long - why nobody had yet invented a better surface material was beyond him. Thankfully, this being the middle of winter, the smell was not so evident, and the only likely danger would be presented by ice patches. Various vehicles were arranged in neat rows stretching as far as he could see from his current position.

"Stop!" came a shout from behind them.

Sol gave the wheeled chair a mighty wrench, and took off to the left.

A shot rang out. People dropped back, looking shocked. Loki remembered that this wasn't New York, where people ran screaming in terror. These people were more likely to look vaguely horrified and begin complaining about the state of the world.

"Bloody hell!" said Sol. "Shoot first, ask questions later!"

The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were gaining on them due to a slight incline in the path which made it harder for Sol to maintain speed with the chair.

More shots. One of them ricocheted off a nearby lamp-post. He felt Sol's tremor. He couldn't allow her to get hurt because of him. It went against everything he had come to understand over the past few decades. The old Loki would not have cared - or at least he would have _pretended_ not to care - but the new improved version had learnt a great deal about priorities, and Sol was his number one. 

"Sol," he said.

"Shut up!" came the (rather insulting) reply.

"No, listen to me! Leave me here. Both of us won't make it out, but there's still time for you."

"What?" she sounded completely horrified. "No! I am not leaving you!"

"You must. It's your only chance."

"And let you get kidnapped and tortured? Certainly not."

A wave of pain crashed around his body. He ground his teeth, snarling, "Stupid, stubborn, idiotic child…"

"What did you call me?"

He winced, remembering their last argument, even though she wouldn't. "You weren't supposed to hear that. I… I'm sorry." He was startled to find that he meant it.

"So I should hope," she said with irritating smugness. "I'm trying to save your life here, after all."

A rueful half-smile crept across his lips. "Ha. I'm probably not worth the effort."

She leant down to growl fiercely in his ear, "If you ever say anything so ridiculous again, I'm going to slap you so hard you'll think the Milky Way broke into your head and took up residence."

He acquiesced with uncharacteristic meekness, and said nothing for a short while.

They raced along, weaving in and out between vehicles.

"Whatever you did to annoy these people must have been quite something!" she remarked presently, after yet another bullet had whined past her ear. "They're really not giving up."

"They won't," he sighed. "That's why I wanted you to go. Anyway, I did annoy them rather spectacularly, but I imagine they are overlooking that in favour of interrogating me, as you fear."

"Then why are they trying to kill us?"

"They're not trying to kill _us_ ," he said pointedly.

There was a silence while those words sank in. "I see," she said, in a strangely hard voice. "Destroy the evidence, I suppose? What would they count me as – collateral damage? Unacceptable risk?"

"Possibly."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I refuse to die as collateral. If I have to die, I'd rather go down fighting."

Irritation, sharpened to a fine point by fear, scratched at the backs of his eyes and dragged its way down the nerves in his arms. "Sol, you can't _fight_ these people – they are like a machine only interested in suppressing the existence of things they don't want people knowing about. The one thing I have learned about the human race in these last few years is that if nothing else you are unbelievably tenacious. I had an _army_ and I lost. You are just one woman, even if you _are_ … well, my point is, how can you hope to win?"

"We'll talk about the army thing later. I've got to get you to my car without getting shot or kidnapped."

The agents had spread out and were attempting to hem Sol and Loki in. Sol saw a small opening, and shot through it, clipping the back of a silver vehicle with the edge of the chair. An agent suddenly appeared in front of them, blocking the way.

"Stop right there!" he commanded.

Sol ran him over with the chair. At least that was evidently her intention – what actually happened was that she caught him in the shins with the footrests, and while he swayed, off-balance from the impact, Loki reached up and hit him in the chest. He crumpled and fell in a heap.

"That was impressive," said Sol, manoeuvring him toward a medium-sized, black vehicle.

"Thank you," he said stiffly, cradling his fist. The punch had hurt him almost as much as it had hurt the agent.

Sol opened the door of the vehicle, and set about manhandling him into the seat. She had just got him in when more shots sounded, and she had to duck down, shutting the door as she did so.

The agents came thundering up, brandishing firearms, and looking grim. The one in front took another shot over the side of the vehicle. There was a cry, and a scuffle.

Loki stopped breathing. His world had already been turned upside-down. Did the Universe have no mercy? If he lost her now ... 

The next thing he knew, she was in the seat next to him, slamming her door.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice tense with worry.

"Just a scratch," she said, turning the key in the ignition to make the vehicle rumble and shudder into life. She backed it up with a swift turn, and burst through the agents as they attempted to hang onto the sides.

"Now we're _really_ on the run," she said with a wicked grin.

Loki decided he rather liked the grin. It reminded him of himself in better times.


	6. Took You So Low, Where Only Fools Go

_Voices again, more voices, always whispering in his unwilling ears, telling him how much of a disappointment he is, how worthless, how stupid to believe himself capable of ruling a world when he cannot even rule himself. He is not his own. His mind is bent, his heart a pathetic fluttering captive of those to whom he unwisely gave the power to crush it. He is standing before the throne of the king he once called Father, and the chains are heavy on his wrists and ankles. His shame is great, paraded as he is in front of all Asgard, a criminal in fetters, and he knows that they are all thinking the same thing - we always knew he would come to no good._

_‘Why?’ his mind burns to demand. ‘Because I prefer books to uncouth drinking revels? Because I use seiðr, the woman's craft, taught to me by the woman who used to be my mother, in the hope that I would sometimes be able to win? Because when Golden Thor was learning fighting techniques, I, the Great Disappointment, was still trying to pick up a broadsword? Oh yes, clearly I could never be trusted.’_

_His bitterness shows itself, as always, in a brittle smile and venomously sarcastic words. When he says, “Have I made you proud?” in that glass-shard voice, he congratulates himself on being able to stand upright and smile when all he wants to do is fall to his knees and weep and scream and smash things (how startlingly and unpleasantly Thor-like!) and let everyone know that he will no longer be ignored._

_As usual, his words are masterfully adept at speaking plain truths while seeming to deceive. “Have I made you proud?” … Because that was what he used to desire once upon a time, before he realised that such a thing could never be possible. They could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard._

_The dungeons are where he belongs. Down, down, into the hell that waits for him. Not the dungeons, the oubliette in the bowels of the city, but a far worse place - his own mind…_

 

The car was not Sol's preferred sleeping area. It was too cramped, too hard, too awkward in all the wrong places. She woke up groggily wondering why all the springs in her mattress were sticking into her back, only to find that the cause of the problem was, in fact, the handbrake.

She sat up too quickly, and bashed her head. "Ow!"

Belatedly remembering the injured, sleeping extraterrestrial in the other seat, she looked around with a grimace, hoping her exclamation of pain hadn't woken him.

He was still asleep, paler than anyone should ever be, and with a knot in the ash-white skin between his jet-black eyebrows. His arms were crossed over his chest – even in sleep he looked ready to leap up and do battle. Except, of course, for the bandages she knew encased his torso underneath that silly-looking hospital gown. She frowned. His blanket had slipped, so it wasn't really doing any good at all, and he was not exactly dressed for the weather, but there was not a single centimetre of gooseflesh to be seen. In his place she would be shivering by now. She hoped he wasn't running a temperature. In his present condition that would be a big problem.

Very slowly and gently, she placed her hand on his forehead. He was slightly cool. Certainly no fever happening there. She breathed a sigh of relief.

Maybe he was one of those fortunate people who like the cold. Sol had always felt that, being descended from generations of tough Norwegians, she should be a bit better with cold weather than she actually was.

She mentally slapped herself upside the head. Stupid. He was from another planet – probably a colder environment, which would explain his lack of chill in this frosty early morning.

Aliens might like the cold, but Sol needed warmth now, so she turned the car heater on. It was only a slight improvement, but for now it would have to do, as to get anything more out of the heater she would have to turn the engine on, and she wanted him to sleep as long as possible.  
She rolled up her sleeve to check on the bullet wound acquired yesterday courtesy of the Men In Black. The sleeve would never be the same again, but her arm was doing well. It had indeed been just a scratch, and she had always healed at a remarkably fast rate. Her friends had called her Wolverine for years because of it. The edges of the fine red line were already knitting back together, and she fully expected that the slight soreness would be completely gone in the next couple of days. If she was lucky, there might not even be a scar.  
She thought back to the bizarre, helter-skelter events of yesterday. Dragging a severely injured alien out of hospital to protect him from the Men In Black had been crazy enough, but when it had escalated into assault on more than one of said suited thugs, and then sleeping in the car off-road to avoid them (since the caravan in her garden was now a decided no-no), perhaps things had gone a little too far. Still, it was done, and she and E.T. there would have to make the best of it. She did wonder how she was going to look after him, though. Despite her concern for his safety and her sympathy toward him, there was no denying that he had shown signs of being somewhat on the difficult side. She hoped she wasn't going to regret this, but she had a nasty feeling that she probably would.

He groaned softly, making her abandon her thoughts and return her attention to him. He was moving, in the painfully gradual way that people do when they are surfacing from deep sleep. The knot in his forehead tightened, and his eyes fluttered open.

Sol was struck, for what had to be the tenth time, by just how big they were, and how startling and lustrous a shade of greyish sea-green, changing hue with reflections and emotions – and it really didn't seem fair for a man, alien or otherwise, to have such incredible bone structure and such beautifully long eyelashes.

"Are we still in your vehicle?" He seemed surprisingly alert for someone who just woke up.

"I'm afraid so."

"We can't hide in it forever," he said, voicing the concern that had been bouncing around the back of her mind for some time now.

"I know," she said, "but I'm out of ideas now."

"I'll give it some thought."

"We have a problem," said Sol, hesitant to bring it up so quickly, but then he did seem to be in that frame of mind, so maybe it would be alright after all. "We need food, and you need clothes."

He looked down at himself with a strange expression. "Damn."

"We sort of left in a hurry, remember?" She was trying not to laugh, but his chagrin was really quite hilarious. "And your old clothes were wrecked."

He shook his head slowly from side to side. "Have you any suggestions?"

She gaped at him. Somehow, she had expected him to have a solution down pat. "Er… well I suppose we'll have to get to town without being seen, and go and buy what we need before trying to disappear again."

He clicked his tongue in frustration. "If only I could still do the things I used to. I could solve all our problems instantly."

She could feel her eyebrow rising. "Instantly? Isn't that a little presumptuous? Or is it exaggeration for effect?"

"Neither," he said, quite seriously, but he was clearly not going to elucidate, so she tried pushing.

"I think it's about time you started spilling the beans, Mr Not From Around Here. Where _are_ you from?"

He was staring into middle distance. He looked exhausted all of a sudden – more than that, he looked lost. Sol felt a sharp pang in the region of her heart. He was so tall, so obviously imposing when not injured and ill, and yet just now he looked like a small boy who has wandered off during a family picnic and has no idea where he is.

The look vanished as he turned his attention to her. "The realm I once called my home is beyond anything you will have imagined."

She grinned with a slight eyeroll. He was so bloody supercilious – even dressed in a stupid, woefully inadequate hospital gown and clearly battered to within an inch of his life, he somehow managed to look like an aristocrat peering down his noble nose at everything.

"My imagination might surprise you," she said, surprising herself instead.

He shot her a look that said _no chance_.

"I really want to know more about you." Sol waited for a silent moment before playing her ace. "I think you owe it to me, actually. Surely it's only fair. I rescued you from the Men In Black, and all I'm asking in return is a little information."

He sighed. She got the feeling that he was hiding behind his annoying superior attitude in order to avoid talking, and all at once a little stab of guilt made its presence felt. He was ill and in pain, he was obviously drained, and she was demanding he tell her his life story. It wasn't fair. "Sorry. I didn't think. I'm too excited about talking to an extraterrestrial being and didn't give any thought to the fact that you're wounded and no doubt still worn out from me dragging you out of hospital and halfway across town and into the middle of nowhere yesterday. You don't have to talk now."

His eyes were very deep, she discovered. They seemed to be full of all sorts of incomprehensible things; secrets nobody should ever know, emotions he would never let out, and memories he didn't want to possess.

"No. I will tell you. You are right – it's only fair that I give you something in return for your… consideration."

She frowned. Hearing him repeat her words made her prized ace seem rather cold and actually somewhat mean. "I – I didn't mean…"

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. "No. You asked for information, and I will give it. The place I used to call home is a realm far away from this one, and it is named Asgard."

 _Asgard?_ Sol actually squeaked. "Asgard? You're joking, right?"

"You seem to know the name," he said, an arrested look in those ridiculous green eyes.

"Well, yes. I'm Norwegian, of course I know about Asgard!"

He seemed confused. "Curious," he muttered. "And yet you have never heard my name?"

"Should I have?"

His eyebrows rose.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said. "Are you famous? How have I not heard of you if you are?"

"That is what confuses me," he said with awkward honesty. "Infamous would probably be a better word."

Infamous? Who was this man? Alien. Extraterrestrial being. Oddity.

“Are there no Lokean worshippers left?"

She shook her head. Wait a minute… "Lokean worshippers? Are you trying to tell me you're a god?"

He sighed again. "I have been informed," he gritted his teeth, "that we are not gods. Your people viewed us as such for centuries, but we are simply… different. We outlive you by millennia, we understand things about the universe that are only just now beginning to dawn on you, and we are, generally speaking, stronger and taller than you. But we are… not gods." It seemed to hurt him to admit it.

"Ok. So you're saying that Asgard is a real place. So by extension, all the gods from the myths are real too? Only they're not gods, just extraterrestrial beings?"

He nodded, curtly.

She felt as if the entire text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica had just been downloaded into her brain and was currently turning her frontal lobe into a kaleidoscope. "Wow."

He said nothing.

The Encyclopaedia stopped spinning, and she began to process the information properly. "Actually, that makes sense…"

His eyes were closed again, but he said, very quietly, "Your theories, Solrun?"

It was like a slap to the face. At first she had been confused and a little irritated by his use of her pet name, mainly because she associated it with her dad, and anyone else touching that seemed somehow wrong. But now she was used to it, and his sudden reversion to using her full name felt chilly and formal.

"Don't," she said.

His eyes opened. "Don't what?"

His voice seemed oddly frosty; she shivered. "You called me by my full name. I'd rather you carried on calling me just Sol."

"Is your name unpleasant to you?"

She shrugged. "Well, it's a bit weird, don't you think? Secret of the sun… I mean, it sounds like a bad mystery book."

"You always used to be intrigued by it," he said – and then pressed his lips tightly together as if he had said something wrong.

"Ok, look – I know you're tired, but you really need to start explaining yourself. What's going on? What's with all the creepy previous knowledge of me doing and saying things I wouldn't ever do or say?"

He heaved a short, hard sigh – a mixture of frustration and anxiety. "It is complicated. I'm not quite sure of the truth myself yet. But I knew you, Sol. Once. I knew you, and yet I no longer know you. You are different – and you do not remember me."

Sol was taken aback by the almost tangible sorrow in his voice. Nothing much seemed to disturb this strange, reserved person (except the lift, of course), and yet just now she could have sworn there were unshed tears in his eyes. And then he blinked, and she thought she must have been mistaken; there was nothing in his eyes at all.


	7. Look At The Wonderful Mess That We Made, We Pick Ourselves Undone

When he'd said he would give their situation some thought, Sol had not quite envisioned _this_. Just how she ended up adding theft to the ever-lengthening list of crimes she had committed in the last two days, she couldn't rightly say – it had all happened so fast. One minute she was listening with increasing discomfort and skepticism to his plan; the next, she was stealing a luxury yacht. She was beginning to understand that life with Loki would probably be characterized by this sort of thing.

He seemed to think that having done the masterminding of this nefarious yet practical plan, he could sit back and let her do all the actual work. Admittedly, he was injured, but still, she had no intention of allowing him to get away with doing _nothing_.

They had left the wheelchair behind because he had insisted he was strong enough. She had argued, but he had won, mostly by steamrollering her with the aristocratic chilly glare that would probably win almost any dispute. She hoped it wasn't going to be a regular occurrence, but something told her that he would never give up anything without a fight. He was just so _stubborn_ , but when she told him this in a moment of intense irritation, he looked at her as if she had insulted him in the worst possible way, and said stiffly,

"Stubborn? That is not a characteristic normally applied to me." He'd said it as if it was normally applied to someone else (probably by him!) but shut down when she tried to probe. She had stared thoughtfully at his perfect profile before dropping the subject with rare tact. It was probably best to pick battles wisely.

So, yes, he had won that round – but the hitch in his step didn't escape her watchful eyes, and despite his best efforts, she heard the slight, sharp intake of breath every time he moved too quickly for himself.  
Having sent her into the nearest town to buy suitable clothes, he had apparently come up with a master plan while he was supposed to be sleeping. When she had returned (with the black jeans that he called ‘surprisingly comfortable’ and the slate-blue polo shirt and dark grey hooded jacket that he viewed with faint distaste before giving in and wearing them clearly on sufferance) his eyes were bright, his elbows on his knees with his fingers steepled in front of his chin, and Sol had known immediately that he was up to something.  
The yacht was his brainchild. She wasn't sure how he had known it would be there, but when you are helping a mulish, condescending alien to steal a high-end yacht, you tend not to ask too many questions lest he decide to walk off and leave you to deal with the police on your own.

Once they were on board, his inertia had suddenly vanished. He wanted to be in charge – not only that, he wanted to do everything and be everywhere. His typical studied indifference was replaced with a simmering, almost manic joy, as if he was taking life by the scruff of its neck and conquering it with fierce delight. It was only a yacht, but to him it seemed to represent something far greater.

Unfortunately, the spirit's eagerness was not in direct proportion to the strength of the flesh, and he tired very quickly. Sol took control of the craft from his exhausted yet protesting fingers.

"You're in no condition to be piloting."

He muttered something she didn't hear – judging from his tone she thought it was probably just as well – and stared fixedly ahead.

"Loki, now is really not the time for another battle of wills! You're going to run yourself into the ground. I know you're enjoying yourself, but don't forget how badly injured you are."

He snarled at her, his eyes narrowed. "I'm hardly in danger of forgetting that."

"Then let me pilot."

One long stare and a heavy sigh later, the yacht was under Sol's command, and the recalcitrant extraterrestrial was leaning weakly against the door. He really didn't look well.

"Why don't you go and sit down somewhere? There are some very nice sofas and things dotted around the decks. You really like to do things in style, don't you?"

He managed a breathy chuckle. "So I've been told."

After a little while, when there was no sound from behind her, Sol looked around, and saw that he had apparently taken her advice. That was a first. He must have been in even worse shape than she'd thought.

Her confidence was misplaced – a few moments later she heard him muttering to himself just outside the door. She rolled her eyes. Hopeless.

The yacht had now reached the place in the middle of nowhere that Sol had deemed safe, at least for a short time. It wouldn't do to stay in any one place for too long, but for now it would do. She stopped the motor, and proceeded to drop anchor. It took a little time despite their having previously laid out the anchor and a reasonable length of rode on deck. A memory flashed into her mind; the first time her father had taken her out on his motor launch. "Never forget to lay out the rode so it won't tangle as it goes down," he'd said. So proud of her when she'd got it all right.

She backed down on the anchor with a lump in her throat.

Loki's voice floated across to her presently, slightly muffled. "Why do you suppose the previous owners of this vessel chose to transport a hundredweight of salt?"

Ah, so he was exploring. She smiled a bit at his choice of words. 'Previous owners' – as though they were now the owners of the yacht! Apparently 'finders keepers' was not a purely human concept. Then she thought about what else he'd said, and frowned. "Salt?"

"Yes," he said. "There is a large chest in the hold, which contains myriad small packages of salt. I suppose they are packed this way for convenience, but a cargo of several hundred cachets seems rather excessive, even for a long voyage. Unless they were intending to preserve meat along the way."

Something clicked in Sol's mind. "Er, Loki… I don't think it's salt."

"I believe you are correct," came the reply after a moment. "Or if it is salt, something has happened to it. I must say it tastes most peculiar."

She ran to the hold. "Oh please tell me you didn't!"

He had. In his hand was an opened plastic sachet, and his face was screwed up into an expression of mystified disgust. "What in the Nine did they intend to do with this? It is not suitable for seasoning, in any event. Perhaps we should jettison it."

"Loki, I think we need to talk. I may know why nobody is chasing us."

He gave her an inquiring look.

"Nobody is chasing us because the owners of this yacht are smuggling drugs. No wonder they haven't told the police and harbour authorities! The last thing they want is a load of uniforms carrying out an inspection."

His bewilderment was evident, but then his brow cleared. "If I understand you correctly, we just stole a ship from criminals. And who says two wrongs make not a right!"

He seemed to be seeing the funny side; his face lit up with a large grin and he started to laugh, a husky, soft chuckle. It was downright freaky.

"Ok, that's enough… how much of that did you take?"

He shrugged. "I tried tasting it, but the flavour was not strong enough for me to identify it, so I tested some more. I still could not identify it, but it is definitely not salt."

"I know that! Here, give me the sachet."

He handed it over. He had 'tested' a fair amount. Sol felt the panic begin to well up inside her. "Loki, are Asgardians… do you have immunities to things?"

His eyes gleamed with wicked amusement. "I am stronger than you, if that is what you mean," he said.

"I mean, are you impervious to toxins?" She willed her voice not to crack. For some reason she didn't want him to know just how much danger he might be in.

"Impervious? No. But no doubt better equipped to deal with them than the average Midgardian."

She breathed again. "Well I think we're about to test that theory firsthand."

He blinked, apparently weighing this information. But his next question was not the one she was expecting. "Why were these people carrying poison?"

"Money," said Sol, briefly. "This particular kind of poison happens to be worth an awful lot. Mostly because it's illegal and dangerous."

He nodded sagely. "That is always a motivating factor for the shallow, weak-minded and greedy in any realm."

He was taking it very calmly.

"Loki… I'm sorry." A sort of desperation drove the words from her mouth.

"Why?"

"Well…" she floundered. "I sort of got you into this…"

"You helped me escape from S.H.I.E.L.D."

"From what?"

He looked puzzled. "The idiots in suits. I suppose you do not know who they are. Those high-class thugs are but a few of the tools used by a largely secret and wholly regrettable organization known, for simplicity's sake, as S.H.I.E.L.D. I've never understood the Midgardian penchant for silly acronymic designations…" he broke off, shaking his head slowly as though trying to dislodge water from his ears.

It made sense that Sol didn't know. Naturally, an organization sent to deal with possible extraterrestrial activity would be anonymous and secret. What didn't make so much sense was that he did know. She wondered, with a shock of slight repulsion, whether he was telepathic. _Oh, God._

But right now there were more pressing concerns than whether or not Loki of Nowhere In Particular could read minds. He was now gazing skyward, a look of sleepy rapture drifting across his face. Apparently the non-salt was starting to affect him.

She managed to get him to the upper deck before he collapsed in a heap of uncharacteristically benevolent smiles and improbably long legs. As attractive as the flybridge undoubtedly was, she had severe qualms about taking him up there in his present condition. She shut her eyes against a horrifying vision of him tipping himself gently over the railings and disappearing into the sea below. No, he was much better off staying on the upper deck.

He was unbelievably relaxed, loose-limbed in a way she hadn't thought possible. Even when he was weakened and foggy from painkiller and the resultant allergic reaction, there had always been an underlying tension, like a strong, steady undertow in a seemingly calm body of water. He was controlled, hard of mind and muscle, a level-headed, sharp, masterful creature of whipcord, wit, and steel, who bore absolutely no resemblance to the abandoned thing currently lying boneless across the sofa. His head was tipped back, and he was laughing, the cut-glass lines of his face softened and youthful, eyes alight with ecstatic mirth at something far beyond his reach.

The laughter died down and she realized he was watching her, staring from his upside-down position.

"Sol," he said carefully.

"That's me!" She felt very stupid for saying it, but it wasn't as if she had much experience in conversing with intoxicated aliens.

"You r'mind me of someone…" His syllables had developed a tendency to run into each other, and his voice lacked its usual crisp precision.

"I wish I could return the favour but you're not like anyone I've ever met!"

"Therar…" he frowned, concentrating. "There are no men like me." He giggled softly. "But you know me, don't you, Sol...?"

"Well, if rescuing you from a hospital and getting stuck on a stolen yacht with you while you're accidentally high constitutes knowing you, then yes, I think I qualify."

The giggle was getting steadily more high-pitched as time went on. He suddenly stopped, and stared at her with eyes rendered even bigger than usual by the narcotic. He studied her, apparently committing everything to memory. "Don' think I ever said I'm sorry. Said a lottv' things I wish I han't. Never said the thing I should. Sickv' telling lies. So'm sorry. No good saying I didn't mean it… I did. I wanted to … hurt you. But I'm sorry."

Sol was touched. Definitely on the edge of being very freaked out, but still touched. It seemed to her that the drug had stripped away his very evident defences, and therefore anything he said now was coming directly from his heart instead of being filtered, sharpened, twisted and shielded. This was pure honesty – something she had a funny feeling he wasn't exactly used to. So it was touching that, in this state of vulnerable truth, what he wanted to do was apologize to her. It didn't even matter that she had no idea what he was apologizing for. The very fact that he was doing it was more than enough.

He had wandered into a dream-like state, his eyes glazing over as he lazily waved a hand around. He seemed to phase back into awareness after a fashion. He examined his hand as if it was some strange artifact, and then replaced it carefully on his chest. "Sol?"

"Yes?"

"You're still here. 'S good." There was a pause. "Where is 'here'?"

"We're on a yacht, remember?"

"Oh, yes," he said vaguely. "Boat. On th’ sea. Sol … I miss you."  
Then he turned over very ungracefully and flopped down on his front, wrinkling his brow at her. He looked like an overgrown schoolboy, childishly genuine and totally uninhibited. "You don' remember me."

"No," she agreed, because really, what else was there to say?

The furrows in his pale forehead deepened. "I'm glad you don' remember."

For some reason, that was heartbreaking. More heartbreaking than ten minutes later, when he started wailing about being a monster. More heartbreaking than five minutes after that, when he threw a cushion at the window and snarled that nothing was fair. More heartbreaking even than when his drugged, irrational wrath finally broke and he began to cry instead.

She approached him cautiously when the huge, gulping sobs had quieted, and sat down beside him on the white sofa. She laid a tentative hand on his back. He trembled, stiffened, and then with a shuddering gasp, he turned and enveloped her in a crushing, clinging, desperate embrace.

He would not let go.

Even when he at last fell into a deep sleep, his arms encircled her. Sol sighed, resigning herself. She shifted, to reduce the danger of her waking up with dead limbs and the prospect of pins-and-needles, and he made a tiny sound of contentment and settled himself into the sofa cushions.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

"What happened last night?"

She forced her eyes open. They did not appreciate this abuse. "Loki?"

She blinked up at him, disoriented, before her brain kicked in and centred her, lying on the sofa, with a very stiff and correct non-god standing just in front of her, pretty much vibrating with discomfort and irritation.

"Last night?" Her brain hadn't quite kicked in that much yet.

"I awoke on that couch instead of in my berth." His distaste was palpable, but she sensed it was a cover for something else. Something very much like raw panic.

"You took drugs by mistake. You were fine to start with, but then the effects started to manifest themselves. You became remarkably placid."

He looked suspicious, but it might have been alright had her dreadful sense of humour not prompted her to add with a wicked smirk, "…and surprisingly affectionate." _This is why you tell everyone you're not a morning person_ , said the little voice in her head. _It's mainly for their protection._

His eyes flashed once with an ill-concealed fury, and then they blanked again, and his entire face settled into a mask of cold menace. "What happened?" His teeth were clenched so hard that it was a miracle any words were able to escape at all.

"Nothing," she said, deciding to let him off. "You giggled a lot, and you apologized to me but I'm still not sure why – I suppose it's all mixed up with the 'knowing me before' thing – and then you ranted for a bit about how unfair life is, and you cried (which, by the way, was really peculiar) and then you hugged me and went to sleep. That's all. Nothing happened. You didn't even snore."

He was seething. She could practically touch the outrage rippling out of him like seismic eruptions. "Of course nothing happened," he bit the words off with harsh irony. "I simply made a thrice-damned fool of myself and effectually destroyed any credibility I might have had with you."

She should have been afraid. He was, from an objective standpoint, completely terrifying like this; looming over her, exuding a strength she had only guessed at, eyes burning with cold fire, every word a hissed reminder of how powerful he was and how helpless she was. And yet she did not feel fear. What she felt was, bizarrely, a mixture of irritation and amusement.

"Honestly, Loki – if credibility is what you're concerned about, I can tell you right now that I've already seen you unconscious and bleeding on the floor, not to mention lying broken in a hospital bed and wearing a truly laughable gown provided by the same establishment… seeing you accidentally out of your head on drugs could hardly make things any worse."

If the cold fire in his eyes had burned before, it fairly raged now, threatening to consume him from the inside out. "How _dare_ you take that tone with me, you… you insect! You child! You are nothing. Less than nothing. A puny, insignificant creature – do you know how much of my normal power it would take for me to crush you with my fingertips? To reduce you to a mere shadow of dust at my feet, where you belong?"

"Almost none, I should think." Sol had no idea where these recklessly courageous words were coming from, but they seemed to have an effect. He glared at her for precisely four seconds, as though willing her to burst into flame under his gaze, and then without speaking he turned on his heel and swept off in the direction of the door.

It slammed shut behind him.

Sol breathed.


	8. All I Want To Do Is Be More Like Me and Be Less Like You

He couldn't believe how close he had come to losing it completely with her. The horrified anger had simply risen up inside him and burst out in a torrent of ugly words. Shame prickled up and down his back. After all this time trying to prove himself better than his origins, he still managed to behave like the monster he was. Sol hadn't helped, with her aggravating, foolhardy humour – but she had known only Midgard, nothing else, and she was just a child really. She should perhaps have known better, but there was absolutely no excuse for his own behaviour. He could not set such a terrible example to her, even if she didn’t know who he was. The trouble was that he didn't know if he could bring himself low enough to apologize. His fear of appearing foolish and weak had grown from a nasty shadow to a great and terrifying monster of gargantuan proportions, shrieking at him from every corner of his mind. But that was always his problem.

His mind dredged up a memory, something that happened a long time ago – a different time, a different place. Sol, disturbed by his ethics, hovering on the edge of outrage. Himself, cool and quietly haughty, baiting her, watching from under half-closed eyelids.

**You WANT to inspire hatred and terror?**

_Her voice is incredulous, her eyes full of censure._

_He shrugs, a tiny, nonchalant gesture that seems to anger her._

**Hate is volatile, but powerful when handled correctly. Fear is more predictable and less difficult to control, but no less powerful.**

_She is fired up now, ready to do battle. He likes her this way, even if she always manages to say the wrong thing and constantly expose her naivety._

**But rulers who lead by exploiting hate and fear often fail. Human history is full of revolutions, assassinations and depositions that prove that point.**

_He gives her a superior look._

**Then those rulers who were overthrown, assassinated and deposed were clearly not skillful enough in their wielding of power.**

_Her eyes are troubled now, big, clear, topaz-coloured and worried._

**Surely gaining obedience by inspiring admiration, love and respect is better?**

**It depends what you mean by 'better'.** _His tone is dry._ **It's certainly far harder to maintain. And distressingly easy to lose.**

_She won't give in. He admires her spirit even as her insistence irritates him like grit in an oyster._

**Ease and expediency shouldn't be the only qualifiers for superiority!**

_He rolls his eyes at her foolish idealism._

**And where in the leaders of Midgard's society are the love and admiration you prize so highly? They are the worst possible combination of weakness and greed. They rule neither with strength nor with kindness, but with lies. And the lies are not even clever ones. Your reasoning is flawed, Sol.**

_He never would admit that she was right, even if he felt it._

 

He shook his head at himself, past and present. He had been (and to a large extent, was still) brimming with hate and fear – he knew those emotions inside out. He knew how they worked, and thus how to manipulate them in others. 'Better' motivations were barely worthy of thought. Admiration was tainted by envy, love by lies; and respect was a thing of the distant past. Her insistence on their value had been as puzzling to him as it was infuriating.

His arrogance was vicious, yet founded far more in crippling doubt than in any true feeling of superiority. But that doubt made him react like a cornered wild beast when he felt threatened.

And whatever had happened last night definitely made him feel threatened. Loss of control – the thing second only to failure on his mental list of terrors – loss of both fear and respect, loss of his precious, carefully woven image. Nobody was ever allowed to see the real Loki. Except for two people, but they no longer mattered, because one of them was dead, and the other thought _him_ dead.

The idea that he had accidentally bared his inner soul to the child who did not even remember him made his teeth ache from sheer panic. How would he be able to control the situation if she no longer saw him either as the suave creature who took everything in his stride or as the powerful Prince of Asgard? It was bad enough that she had already seen him wounded and weak, but to know what was really going on underneath all his masks…! Unacceptable. And what made it ten times worse was that he knew quite well that for all his talk of crushing her with his fingertips, his power was almost nonexistent. The impotent fury of a thwarted monarch warred with an overwhelming desire to crawl into a dark corner and hide.

In the end, he retreated to the lower deck and locked himself in the berth that was almost too luxurious to be called such.

If he had lost control of the situation, at least he did not have to witness it.

He slept.

He healed. Slowly. His wounds still bled sluggishly if he tried to move around too much, and his body ached from head to foot, but he was very gradually beginning to knit back together again. He had survived worse even when he had not wished to, and he was damned if he would let himself die this time.

But he did not eat. There was no food in the berth, and he refused to creep out and be caught with his hand in the larder, so to speak. He told himself very firmly that he did not require sustenance, and went back to sleep whenever the hunger became too noticeable.

After the twelfth time he had sternly commanded his stomach to think of other things, there was a knock at the door.

If he ignored it, she would go away.

"I know you're in there, Loki, so you can stop pretending otherwise."

If he ignored her…

"Loki, I understand that you're annoyed, but it's ridiculous to lock yourself away in there without food. You're just hurting yourself."

He knew that, of course. But he was not going to admit it to her.

"Loki, please open the door."

He shut his eyes.

"Loki?" Her voice cracked.

_Oh, damn it all. Now she's frightened._

But before he had a chance to do more than begin to ease himself from the horizontal to the vertical, she had kicked the door in, and was lying on the floor in a tumbled heap of denim and complaints. She stood up and rubbed her knees.

"You're alive!" she looked ecstatic. His heart contracted.

And then she remembered, and a stern expression clouded her elfin face. "You're alive, so I can tell you off. Never, ever, ever lock me out again. You could have died in here, all by yourself with no food or anything, and only because you're too cursedly proud to let me in, you stupid bastard."

The effect of this was electric. He couldn't help it. That word, with all its disgusting, terrible connotations, made his unhappy stomach heave.

"Do not call me that!" he growled, leaping to his feet with a vigour that surprised even him.

Sol folded her arms, clearly unimpressed. "I don't see the need for all these histrionics. I only said-"

"Yes, thank you, I heard quite well the first time. I do not know what things have come to on Midgard, but where I come from that word is still a gross insult, and I will not brook this sort of offensive abuse."

She stared at him. "Ok, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it. But my God, you'd try the patience of a saint."

"How would you know?" he snapped, immediately regretting it.

"I'm well aware I'm no saint, but you don't get to say things like that if you're going to take umbrage at me calling you a bastard."

"I take umbrage because it is _true_!" Loki snapped.

There was a long, pregnant silence, during which he eviscerated himself for letting slip the one thing he really hadn't wanted to say.

She sat down on the bed. "Well. I'm terribly sorry I said anything. I had no idea. It's just a term of abuse I use when I'm irritated with someone – I never meant to actually call into question your parentage."

"Ha! My parentage."

"I think you'd better start from the beginning."

"This is not a _child's tale_ ," he spat. "There is no happy ending. Two worlds were at war. The king of one world left his illegitimate runt out on a rock to die. The king of the other world picked it up and took it home with him because he foresaw an opportunity to manoeuvre things later on. His plans did not come to fruition. The runt grew up always knowing he was different, but never _why_ , until it was revealed to him one day by the merest coincidence that he was the unwanted offspring of the monster he had always viewed as his worst enemy. So he killed the monster, tried to validate his existence, failed, and fell off a bridge. He then fell into the hands of something even worse, tried to take over another world, and failed in that too. He was sent to prison for eternity. When his adoptive brother broke him out of prison, he tried to redeem himself, and I am sure it will come as no great surprise to you that he failed also in that. He then lied to everyone and pretended to be a king, was found out, and escaped like a coward from the end of his world. But try as he might, he could not escape his heritage, because he was a monster born of monsters, and the evil was in his blood. The end. You may now depart."

Sol's eyes had filled with tears. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

He breathed a short, sarcastic laugh. "Don't be – it's a waste."

She stood up again, blinking the tears away with impatient motion. "Don't you dare tell me not to be sorry. You obviously view yourself as some kind of repellent beast, but that's not how you appear to me. You're weird, you're stuck-up, you've got a horrible sense of humour, and you're a bloody nuisance when you refuse to let me help you, but you're not a monster."

"You have no idea," he said, almost sadly.

"Listen to me. I know you don't want to, because you're Loki of Somewhere Else and you've got a whole army of massive complexes that any psychologist would have a field day investigating, but you're going to listen to me because I'm right. This 'monster' that you see in yourself. You can't let that define you. Or the expectations you didn't meet. If you didn't meet them, you know what? It's only because they were too high. So stop brooding like a damn Victorian romantic hero, and be who you are. Stop trying to fit yourself into other people's ideals and make your own. Accept that you are not who you thought you were, and move on. You're above it all. You are unique, Loki. You are _you_."

If she had attempted to brain him with a door-handle he could not have been more astonished.

She seemed satisfied that she had left him utterly speechless, and moved toward the door.

"Now we've got that over with, I found pasta and tomatoes in the cupboard and apple crumble in the freezer. I'm hoping you know what both of those things are, but even if you don't, you're welcome to come and try them out. You know where the galley is."

She looked back as she was leaving. "Sorry about the door, but at least you won't be able to lock me out again. And by the way, I'm only going to say this once – you can, and doubtless will, do whatever the hell you like, but if you die on me I'm never speaking to you again."

He followed her to the galley.


	9. I Come With Knives and Agony

Sol talked. Loki listened. She asked questions, many of which he deflected. She smiled and scowled, and he battled with the various conflicting feelings she stirred, each one more puzzling and terrifying than the last. She poked fun at him, and he kept prodding back with little barbs of sarcasm, all of which she parried with cheerful skill. It seemed that she had vented all her frustration earlier, and was now impossible to provoke. Every mouthful of food she took relaxed her further, until by the end of the meal she was ready to tell him her entire life story. Under normal circumstances he would have lost the will to live halfway through her tale, but these were not normal circumstances, and he wished to know all he could about this different Sol.

Her personal history bore only superficial resemblance to what he had learned during their previous association. Her father had been involved with scientific research – that had not changed. What was different was the fact that his research had attracted the notice of what she described as the Powers That Be. Their attention was undesirable in the extreme as far as Sol was concerned. Her voice trembled as she recounted the things they had done to her father, the harassment and psychological damage, the gradual, ruthless shutting down of his entire life because of the things that he knew, and finally his complete breakdown.

“I loved him so much. I’m not a person to complain about things being unfair, but this … this was a massive injustice. He was a good man, Loki. A really good man. If they’d left him alone he could have achieved such great things, but they couldn’t bear it that he knew things they considered their intellectual property - and he’d figured it all out on his own, too! - so they basically tortured him every day until he couldn’t take it anymore.”

Loki had remained silent through this. His stomach was roiling, nauseated, although he had seen and done so many things worse than those she had just told him. Something about the kind-eyed man he remembered from that other time, long ago, had left an impression on him despite the awkwardness of the circumstances, but now to think of that same man broken by the merciless juggernaut that was S.H.I.E.L.D. made him feel physically ill. It was not even a feeling of guilt, for he knew quite well that whatever happened in this world was not _his_ fault - this world in which he was not even certain that he existed. It was something far worse. Rage he knew, but this feeling was stronger even than the love he had felt for Thor, his once-brother. This protective fury was something he had felt only once before, an eternity ago, when Odin took away from him something that was far more precious than any treasure and more important than his own life had ever been.  
Now he was feeling it again, and it made his throat constrict with fear. This emotion was as unpredictable as a blindfolded valkyr and twice as lethal. He did not trust himself with it.

"Your world has always taken a dislike to those of its inhabitants who seemed too prescient," he said, with a tone that was perhaps overly harsh.

"That's true. You would think we'd have grown out of it by now. Didn't we hang enough witches and burn enough scientists already?"

"At heart you will never be more than the frightened children who hid behind my people in the Old Days."

"I hope that we can learn to become something more than that," she said, and he should have caught the slightly defensive note in her voice, but he was too busy stamping down the irrational and useless rage.

"You think you have grown so much in the last ten thousand years, but you have only succeeded in weaving yourselves a pleasantly mature glamour. Underneath it you are still the same violent, scared babies you have always been."

"Babies ... I see. We're small and insignificant to you. But you know, things we have learned that seem trivial and backward to an extraterrestrial who lives for millennia are important lessons for us. We might have only a few short years to make our mark on the world, but we can make it a damn big one!"

"This world is fractured," he said dismissively.

"But in time, maybe it won't be. Maybe we will grow wiser, and be able to resolve and celebrate our differences, maybe we will realize that greed is a bad motivator, and just maybe we will be able to put our past behind us."

"Or maybe you will destroy yourselves with one of your precious nuclear fission devices."

She was starting to get angry - he could feel it now. "That's a very cynical outlook, Loki."

"I have no patience with idealism," he growled. It was partly true. Midgardian idealism was too close to his own lost naïvete for him to be comfortable with it. "Your people will never grow wiser until they accept that they cannot solve their own problems. They require someone to guide them. Their need for rule is built into them. Without a strong, unified leadership, they fall victim to their own petty squabbles, and end by killing themselves."

"Is that how you see us?" Was that hurt in her face?

"Is that not how you _are_?" He stared her down, because he was right, and he knew it.

She dropped her eyes and moved her cutlery around unnecessarily. "Perhaps so. But who would you suggest to be that leader? You?" She was looking right at him again, and shot the question into him like a defiant missile.

"Once, I thought I could," he said, past caring that he was letting out far too much information. "But I failed, because I always do."

Her mouth fell open. "So when you said you tried to take over another world, you meant… Earth?"

He nodded.

"How do I not know about this?"

"I… have been pondering this mystery. I believe that while I was escaping from Asgard, something happened to the branch of the tree. My destination remained unchanged, but the reality shifted – possibly an effect of the disturbance I left behind me, and the fact that my power was weakened by my wounds. I did not think to make sure my pathway was undamaged. Fire is a powerful force, and its reach is long."

"Just a minute… branch? Tree? You'll have to explain all this to me, because I'm just an insect after all."

"If that was an attempt to garner an apology from me, I must tell you it will not succeed."

She folded her arms and snarked straight back to him. "No, I know you only apologize when you're under the influence. Good thing there's plenty of that stuff left…"

For a moment he truly thought that she meant it. "I refuse to ingest any more of that wretched toxin! I will throw it overboard at once!"

"Oh, calm down! You didn't think I was serious, did you? Good grief, we need to work on your sense of humour. Now, tell me about the tree. I'm interested."

He explained Yggdrasil, and she gratified him by seizing the idea with both hands and becoming very enthusiastic.  
"My father once hypothesized that something like this could exist! A method of interdimensional travel that did not rely on propulsion or fuel systems. A naturally occurring phenomenon that could be harnessed by people who understand its power." Her eyes shone with excitement and tears. "I wish he was here. He would have loved to talk with you about this."

Loki dropped his eyes to get away from the disconcerting level of emotion in her face, and was startled to discover as he did so that her hands were clutching his tightly. He had not even noticed. He coughed. "If you've no objection, I would appreciate the return of my hands."

She dropped them instantly. "Sorry," she mumbled.

He pulled himself together.  
"Now, I did not travel along one of the larger branches – over time I have discovered secret ways along the paths between the realms. I have mapped them in my mind, and they do correspond to some of the pathways used in normal passage, but for some reason they are hidden. Unless one knows where to look, they are almost indiscernible. I call them _hljóðkvistar_."

She screwed up her face, attempting to translate. "'Quiet twigs'?"

"'Silent branches'," he corrected with a tiny smile. "They speak only to me."

"So your theory is that the fire and confusion on Asgard, plus the effect of your injuries on your own power, distorted the… _hljóðkvistr_ … you were travelling. And, what? You fell through into a different universe?"

"Simply put, yes. It is not unreasonable to assume that other realities exist. Time and space are fluid yet solid in a way even I do not fully understand."

"A little like light behaving as both particles and waves?"

"A little," he acknowledged. He did not really wish to be sidetracked into a discussion of Midgardian scientific understanding. "If we assume that other realities do exist, but are veiled from us by the fluidity of time and space, I conjecture that at certain points along the paths, the tips of the branches of Yggdrasil may almost connect with those on the other side. My hypothesis is that the veil was warped and weakened by the phenomena I have already explained, and in consequence, instead of continuing along my own _hljóðkvistr_ , I slipped through the divide and onto the corresponding branch in your reality. And, come to think of it, I was wrong when I said that my destination remained unchanged. I meant to visit London, because I believed you to be there."

"You were coming to me?"

A wave of intense discomfort nearly suffocated him, but he managed to nod, stiffly. What did it matter now, anyway?

Her eyes were shining again. She leaned across the table toward him, saying in a voice that thrilled with discovery, "Don't you see? Your destination didn't change."

Utterly confounded, he simply stared at her until she explained herself.

"Your destination wasn't London, Loki – it was me."

* * * *

Sol dangled her legs over the side of the yacht. She had sat down at the bottom of the railings on the flybridge, and was looking out at the water, leaning her chin on her crossed arms which were arranged carefully on top of the lowest rail. She had moved the yacht four times so far, and as yet nobody had challenged her. Which was good. She didn't let herself get complacent, however, because the people Loki called S.H.I.E.L.D. were not the sort to give up easily. Her dad had been living proof of that – until he'd died as an indirect result of their ministrations. She felt a sudden pain in her jaw, and realized that she had been grinding her teeth. It was a habit she had as a child, and she'd mostly outgrown it, but in times of prolonged stress it sometimes reared its head again. She couldn't let them get hold of Loki. Yes, he was an extraterrestrial with a shockingly bad attitude, but he was a person, and he was still injured. He was getting better, but she was sure he wasn't as well as he insisted on pretending. And she knew that his attitude was just a cover.

The night she had made that all-important discovery, he had gone extremely quiet for about twenty minutes, and had then stood up abruptly and left the galley. Sol had not followed him. He probably needed some time to figure things out. God knew _she_ did. Her insight into why he had arrived in the middle of nowhere was unsettling, to say the least. _Your destination was me_ , she thought bitterly. What had she been thinking, blurting that out when she knew quite well he didn't cope with emotion and obligation? How was he supposed to feel about that? What had she expected him to do? The truth was, of course, that she hadn't expected anything. The solution to the mystery had just popped into her head, and she had spoken the thought as it appeared, without any thought whatsoever.

She hadn't seen him for about two days, but she was not going to break his door down again, because this time it was her fault. And if he wanted food, he would find a way of obtaining it - no doubt clandestinely, in the middle of the night – and that was fine.

"One would think it possible to see the edge of the world, on a day like this."

His voice startled her; she hastily untangled herself from the railings, and stood up. "Loki! Er… good morning."

"You didn't need to stand," he said. He looked surprisingly cheerful.

"That's ok. I was getting a bit stiff anyway from sitting in one position for too long."

He leant on the railings, almost relaxed. "Your sea is very restless."

"It's the Atlantic, in winter. It's got problems. Don't tell me you get seasick?"

He looked down his nose at her, but it was gentle mocking rather than the harsh sarcasm he normally dished out. "I don't suffer from anything of the sort. I was just remarking on the difference between this sea and the ocean of my realm."

"What is Asgard like?"

"What is a rainbow to a butterfly?" he retorted, but his voice was tired. He folded his hands and leaned his wrists on the top railing, looking down at the water directly under him, three decks down. "It's glorious. Or it was. Once. It used to be a fantasia of gold and waterfalls, the villages picturesque and the hills so green and rolling… and in the midst of it the shining city rose up like a coruscating beacon, attached to the outer realms by the rainbow bridge that lights where your feet tread, and everything glowed like a thousand distant stars. Now it is ravaged by political unrest and the scarring sword of fire. The villages smoke and the hills are black; the trees that once grew so luxuriant are twisted and charred, and everywhere there is discontent and pain. I have earned myself the reputation of being an agent of chaos – but in truth that is real chaos, and I do not like it."

Sol shivered.

"You should wear more clothing if you're cold," he said laconically, without looking at her.

"It is chilly," she agreed, "but I want to hear more."

"It is not a nice tale," he warned her.

"None of your stories are. But I don't always want hearts and flowers. Sometimes I want the truth."

"I became king through a set of unfortunate circumstances which led to my disguising myself as my predecessor. For a while, all was well – I managed things with wisdom and caution."

"..and humility," murmured Sol.

"If you are going to keep interrupting, I won't continue," he said, with absolutely no change in tone.

"Sorry, sorry – please keep going, I promise I'll shut up."

"Then from Alfheim came a boy who called himself a prince. He said he was the younger son of the king and queen, but had been lost as a baby and raised by the elves until he attained his majority, and then they told him of his true legacy. He was young and handsome, charming, smooth-spoken, and every single word he spoke was sucked in greedily by those who had already begun to desire change. I do not know whether what he said about his birth was true; he certainly seemed to believe it. I do know that a great deal of what else he said was completely false. I have some experience with lies, and in consequence I can usually tell when someone is not being honest. He lulled the people into believing in him. They hailed him as their saviour – the young and beautiful prince who would lead them out of the dust of centuries of tradition and legend, and urge them toward the dawn of a new and wonderful future. I had tried to instigate small changes here and there, but my hands had been largely tied by my disguise. The king could hardly change his mind about important things so quickly – that way lies suspicion and mistrust, and I could not afford it. Balder promised them everything they thought they wanted, and so they put the blind faith of their silly, suggestible hearts fully in him. In this way he raised an army to overthrow me. They besieged the shining city, killed a great number of loyal guards, and finally burned me out of my disguise. Of course, once they knew who I was, their rage knew no bounds. I've never been exactly popular. I tried to put a stop to their madness by killing their leader. If a cunning, irresponsible, self-serving boy such as Balder had succeeded in getting his hands on the throne of Asgard, it would have been a disaster. Instead of which, I caused Ragnarok. It was a gamble, and I lost."

Sol stared down at his hands, which had unfolded themselves and were now clutching the railing. "I'm sorry," she said. It was hopelessly inadequate, but it was heartfelt, and that was what he needed, if he needed anything.

"My reign could have been the new dawn they wanted so much, if only they had been patient."

"People never are. Whether they're Asgardian or human, they seem to be much the same really. People always want what they can't have, and if someone offers it to them they will pretty much jump off a cliff if that's what he says they have to do."

"It would have been far less awkward if they had done that," he said with the faintest spectre of a smile.

The waves lapped and pounced against the yacht, and Sol and Loki sank into a thoughtful silence, swayed by the rhythm of the sea.  
"Will you ever go back?"

He turned his head at that one. "Go back? To what? Prison, possibly. Most likely execution. What I did will be considered high treason, and no-one will want to hear my side of the story. No, I shall never go back. There is nothing for me in Asgard now. Besides, at the moment I am too weak to go anywhere.”

But the thought of going home seemed to linger behind his elusively green-blue eyes, and Sol wondered how long it would be before he decided that even punishment at home was preferable to freedom on an alien world where his very existence seemed to be a strange anomaly.


	10. Growing Darkness, Taking Dawn

_Ash, night-black and gritty, burying the ground, burying the light, obscuring everything to make the world almost formless. Jagged edges of rock and broken ships jut up from the volcanic mass. Swirling, greenish mist, choking the air - thus befouled, the atmosphere seems to crouch, waiting to strike like some ancient, hideous evil lurking at the bottom of a shadow. But there is no-one for it to poison. Only a corpse, lying exposed and pitiful, isolated in a small valley plain between two rocky outcrops. The corpse is so pale it is almost grey, as if the ash is beginning to take possession of it already. Its hair, tangled, ravaged, is bleeding into the black ground, pooling like raven's blood. A harsh, rattling breath. The corpse moves almost imperceptibly as the dormant life awakens._   
_It is a long struggle. The breaths come at a heavy price of pain. Eyes flicker open - large, grey-green gems, wet with bitter agony of body and soul. They take in the eerie, menacing surroundings, and a look of intense sorrow clouds their glow. Fine lips of a soft, narrow mouth, cracked and burned by pain and the howling wind of this desolate place, quiver and tremble as they form a single word, murmured - "Why?"_   
_And then a deeper breath enables the word to be wailed to the ominous sky in a long, heartbroken burst of emotion - "WHY?"_   
_Tears trickle wretchedly. Abject misery crushes him in its lethal grip. And the question echoes around his soul, clanging like a mournful bell in the hollow reaches of his heart. Why? Why could he not have died? Why did his broken body insist on clinging to the last shred of life and so force him back into consciousness, when all he desires is to sleep forever?_   
_He lies on his back, refusing to move even though his entire body aches unbearably. It is a battle of wills. His body cleaves to life though his mind and heart cringe from it._   
_"I died with honour, doing what was right for once in my sorry existence. I felt the thrill of battle in vengeance for my mother, the exultation of knowing I truly mattered - and the sweetness of a death that could have redeemed me. Why should I live to ruin that?"_   
_But his body wins. With a deep groan he turns over to rest his weight on his bent forearms, feeling the blood pulse through his unwilling veins, feeling his power rise and fall, healing him. It surges to the messy hole in the middle of his abdomen, mending and weaving and knitting, and he cannot stop it. His entire torso is soaked with dark blood, and it's in his mouth, tangy, metallic, and strange. He feels nauseated, and not just because of the vile taste or even the pain. His last chance for redemption and peace, his one brief, shining attempt to be selfless and brave, has failed._   
_Of course he failed. He always does. What else could be expected of the bastard, miserably undersized offspring of a frost giant? He was born a disappointment, and the only pity is that he hasn't just died one. But why should it be that easy? He should have known, because he doesn't deserve it._   
_A bitter laugh tries to bubble up in his chest, and he coughs, spitting more blood. There is so much of it, oozing, flowing, dripping, pooling everywhere, seeping into his clothes and the ash beneath him. It feels and looks as though every last drop of the precious, vital fluid has drained from his body... and yet still, unbelievably, he is not dead._   
_Once again, he lives despite himself._

* * * *

Sol crouched beside his bed, trying to drag him out of his dreams. He had woken her up with a particularly anguished howl, and she couldn't leave him tossing in the grip of what was clearly a hideous nightmare.  
"Why, why?" he mumbled, forehead drawn into fine lines of misery. A tear ran down from his left eye, crossing his temple before disappearing into his hairline. "Please, no!" He was begging like a scared child, weeping softly now, his hands knotting in the fabric of his shirt. The sheets and covers of his bed were in a hopeless tangle somewhere around his feet, and two of his pillows had escaped onto the floor. The third was currently residing in a drunkenly lopsided position halfway down the bed.  
Sol reached out a tentative hand. Loki was groaning now, muttering something about pain and no and mother. She knew he needed to wake up , but she wasn't sure how he would feel about her seeing him like this. Granted, she had already seen him wounded, sick, and dressed in less-than-flattering hospital clothes, not to mention pushing him around in a wheelchair and then dealing with the slightly embarrassing interlude when he was under the influence - but this was different somehow. It was as if a chink in his personal armour had opened, unintentionally revealing a part of his soul. It was frighteningly intimate, and it tugged at her heart.  
Her hand touched his chest - the muscles tightened under her fingers, and his eyes flew open. He shot upright, grabbing her wrists in a punishing grip, snarling, "Dare touch me once more and I will ensure you never use your hands again."  
She said nothing. He glared at her, breathing hard, the tears from his dream still shining in his eyes. She stared back, trying to calm her heart, which was beating madly.  
His breathing slowed. "Forgive me, Sol," he muttered, his voice rusty with sleep. "Old habits die hard, they say. I'm not used to people waking me from my dreams."  
"I didn't want to leave you in it," she said quietly, not letting him escape from her steady gaze. "It sounded like a truly horrible nightmare."  
His eyelids flicked down. "It was," he said shortly. Then he looked up again. "Thank you for your concern, but next time you would be better off leaving me to my night terrors."  
"We all have our demons, Loki. Yours just happen to come at night, when you're most vulnerable. I'd wake you again even if you made good on your promise to break my hands."  
He dropped her wrists as if her skin had burnt him.  
"You know nothing about me. You don't know what I've done. From the moment I arrived I have endangered you indirectly, and just now I... Sol, did I hurt you?"  
"Yes," she said, looking him right in the eyes. "But it doesn't matter."  
His eyes clouded, green and confused. "Why do you persist?"  
"I'm sorry, what?"  
"Why do you bear with me? You don't remember me, so it isn't that. Yet you came to me when I was in that place of healing, and you refused to let me be taken for questioning, and you orchestrated my escape, and now you take care of me while I am in this wretched condition, even when I am unkind to you. Why?"  
She took her time replying, mostly because she hadn't thought about it until now. "I don't know. I felt sorry for you when you collapsed in the pub. You probably hate that! But I felt sorry for you. And when you were in hospital... I couldn't leave you there by yourself. You seemed so alone. John Donne said 'no man is an island' but you were, and I didn't like it."  
"John Donne seems to indulge in wishful thinking," was Loki's only observation on her reasoning.  
"He was a poet," she said, as if that explained everything. "The truth is, I saw you."  
His eyes were suddenly huge. "You saw me? How is this possible?"  
"I mean, I saw your solitude. That part of you that makes you alone in a crowd. I can pick that sort of thing up at ten paces because I'm an island too. And I thought that maybe two islands together might be less isolated."  
He took a deep breath, his white forehead still wrinkled in perplexity. "I do not understand you, Sol."  
"You don't have to," she laughed.  
But she knew it wasn't that simple. Not for him. He was like her, a curious, inquisitive creature who wanted things to make sense. He would not be satisfied with an unsolved mystery, and he would not be happy until he had taken her apart like an unfamiliar piece of machinery and catalogued all the individual parts of her soul. If she was lucky he wouldn't get bored halfway through. If she was very lucky he might even put her back together again afterwards.  
"What time is it?"  
She blinked her way out of this rather bizarre thought process, and remembered looking at the clock by her bedside when the sounds of his disturbed sleep had woken her.  
"It must be about three a.m. by now," she replied.  
He put a hand up to his forehead. To give him credit, his fingers barely shook. "You should sleep."  
"I'm awake now," she said, shrugging.  
"I woke you." He was obviously mortified.  
"Don't worry about it."  
"I will worry about it! If you are tired you will be unable to pilot this craft properly. We will be captured."  
"And there I thought you actually cared about me being tired. I should have known better." She was joking, but he took it seriously, a tiny flicker of hurt showing in his eyes.  
"Yes, you should not expect anything more from a monster."  
She grabbed his hands. He flinched violently, stammering, "Wh - what?"  
"Would you like to tell me why it is that every time I make a joke that could by any chance be taken the wrong way, your sense of humour disappears without trace? I know you've got a sense of humour. It's a rotten one, rather like undertakers and pathologists, but it's there alright normally. Why do you always take everything I say so seriously when it could be construed as a criticism? I would never say anything like that to you."  
His narrow, sculpted mouth twisted up into a wry half-smile. "Yet you insult me frequently."  
"Insult you, yes. Swear at you, sometimes. You're infuriating! But I'd never say anything really meant to hurt."  
The look on his face opened a crack in her heart that hurt like hell. It was a look of pathetic uncertainty, wary appraisal, and disbelief. Nobody as tall and beautiful and commanding and intelligent as he was should ever look like that. She squeezed his hands tightly.  
"I promise I'm telling the truth, Loki. Remember what I said. Look beyond what you think you are."  
He wrenched his hands away from her, snorting a mirthless laugh. "How can I? How can I, when it blackens my entire horizon?"  
She stood up abruptly. There was no point in arguing with him; they would both end up angry, and she had no desire to start a blazing row at three in the morning, so instead she swallowed her exasperation and said quietly, "My dad used to say that disturbed nights need settling with a hot drink. I'll go and make something."  
She didn't give him a chance to refuse, bolting out of the door before he could say anything at all.  
She made her way to the galley, thinking thoughts of hot chocolate and biscuits, but unsure as to whether she would find them. The stores, though well-stocked, were somewhat eclectic in their choice of supplies. Boxed orange juice sat next to tins of caviar, bottles of Laurent-Perrier on a small rack in a cupboard next to about a six-month supply of Ritz cheese crackers. The likelihood of actually finding what she wanted was quite slim.  
She pulled the light cord in the galley and set about rummaging. At the very back of the third cupboard she unearthed a minuscule tub of drinking chocolate powder, and with a little whoop of triumph she went to boil some water.  
Six and a half minutes later, she was shoving a mug of steaming chocolate into Loki's hands. He assessed it with caution. "What is this?"  
"Hot chocolate."  
"You drink melted chocolate?" He sounded disgusted.  
"No, no, it's just a drink that's got chocolate in it. It comes as a powder and you stir hot water into it. Try it. It's very ... comforting. My dad always used to give me hot chocolate when I had a bad night."  
"You used to suffer from nightmares?" This seemed to surprise him.  
"Yes. Terribly. I used to wake up screaming on regular occasions."  
"Do you still have this problem?"  
She shook her head, warming her hands on her mug. "Not really. Very very rarely, if I'm totally stressed or upset about something, I'll have a bad one. But I could probably count on one hand the nightmares I've had in the last two years."  
"What are they about?"  
"Usually, they're about losing people I love. Sometimes I killed them, sometimes the murderer is after me as well. It just depends. Once or twice I dreamt I was drowning in an ocean swarming with sharks. That was a particularly terrifying one."  
He was gazing into his hot chocolate. Sol took a sip of hers, burnt her tongue, and said, "What was yours about?"  
His eyes snapped up to hers. "I would rather not discuss it."  
She recoiled from his harsh tone, slightly hurt. "Oh. Ok."  
He sighed. "Forgive me. I suppose it's unfair for me to quiz you on your dreams and then refuse to share anything of mine. I dreamt that I was dying. I wanted to die. I had lost everything I cared about. But I could not die because my power was healing me. I was covered in blood, in absolute agony, and there was no reason for me to live, but I lived."  
Sol shivered, and took another sip to fortify herself, not caring that it was still like a furnace. "No wonder you were disturbed! I'm sorry. Dreams can feel so real, and are often difficult to get out of your head... but it was just a dream, Loki, don't attach too much significance to it. That's what I had to remember about mine... however vivid and awful they were, they were not real. Just dreams."  
"Just dreams," echoed Loki, but his voice sounded oddly hollow.  
"I should leave you to settle," said Sol after a moment. "Don't forget to drink your chocolate."  
He managed something that was nearly a smile. "Sol... thank you."  
"You're welcome. Goodnight, Loki. I hope you sleep well from now on!"  
An hour later, she crept back into his berth to check on him, and found him fast asleep, hugging one of his errant pillows, with a half empty mug of chocolate on the shelf beside the bed.


	11. Then the Lightning Finds Us, Burns Away Our Kindness

Loki seemed almost cheerful when he finally emerged from his berth at gone ten o'clock. He sat down at the table in the galley and munched his way through three pieces of toast and a banana, following up with orange juice, and not once did the hazily thoughtful expression leave his face. Sol eyed him with suspicion. It was a welcome change to have him not skewering her with sharp, exasperated wit or mercurial anger, but she didn't quite trust this new improved pensive Loki.

"Are you feeling ok?" It wasn't quite the first thing she'd said to him today, but it was the most meaningful. He put down his glass of orange juice and looked at her as if she had just appeared out of thin air.

"I don't know. Should I be feeling ill?" It was such a weird response that she found herself wondering if he had sleepwalked his way into the drug stash after she left him in the small hours.

"Well, no, but after your disturbed night, you know ..."

His face cleared. He smiled a genuine smile that was extremely attractive in its complete simplicity. "Oh, that. No, I assure you I'm quite recovered, thank you. I feel actually remarkably well today."

And he went back to staring into space with a faint smile in his distant eyes. Sol decided to leave him to it, and got busy sorting things out on board ready for the next change in position. She thought it was probably about time for another move.

As usual, he managed to creep up on her and make her jump out of her skin. She dropped a cleat for the anchor rode directly onto her left foot, and bent double with a small yelp of pain.

"I wish you would stop doing that!" she grumbled at him. He was just like a cat, honestly.

"I'm sorry," he said. The words seemed to come easier to him these days. "I didn't intend to make you hurt yourself."

"It's ok," she said, testing her foot to see if it was still as attached as it looked. "I've got another one."

He smirked. "And what use do you imagine a one-footed Midgardian would be to me? Here, let me see."

She knew his rather awful jokes were his way of showing awkward concern. Probably he felt that showing real concern without hiding his motives would open him up to ridicule or worse. She stuck her foot out at him, allowing him to check it even though she knew perfectly well it would only bruise. That was her way of acknowledging his concern and showing trust in him. He ran his long fingers over her foot, and she watched his movements. His hands were an incredible juxtaposition of strength and elegance; artistic, perfect, strongly veined.

It struck her as odd that apart from the first moment of seeing him and the initial, visceral jolt of appreciation she had undoubtedly felt then, her recognition of his good looks had been, and remained, almost wholly objective. Yes, she knew - on an intellectual and aesthetic level - that he was gorgeous, with all that pitch-black hair and those breathtaking eyes in his angular, fine-boned face, but despite all of that there was no attraction, simply a feeling of understanding, and something else that might be called _kinship_.

He finished his survey of her injury while she was digesting this sudden bombshell dropped on her by her own consciousness, and gently put her foot back to the ground. He straightened up. "Well, I think you might survive this time."

"Glad to hear it! Now, was there a reason why you came up behind me and made me drop a cleat on my foot, or were you just out for a stealthy stroll?"

"There was a reason," he began, and then stopped, seemingly unsure. It was unlike him to be so hesitant. "Sol, there is somewhere I must go."

*  *  *  *  *

The more Sol heard of his plan, the less she liked it. They had sat down on the infamous white sofa while he expounded his idea to her, and she was now feeling in dire need of a drink - preferably something with an alcohol content of over 30%, but failing that, anything with a large dose of caffeine would probably do the trick.

"I'm going to make some coffee," she said. "I know you haven't finished explaining yet, but if I don't have something strong to drink immediately, my brain is going to implode."

He didn't say anything, for which she was profoundly grateful. She skulked off to the galley to boil a kettle and try to revive her brain with a shot of caffeine so strong it was nearly solid. It helped. She could feel her sense of humour slowly resurrecting itself as she knocked back her second espresso cup of liquid warp plasma.

"So let me get this right... you want to go to Stonehenge?"

He nodded.

"I seriously hope that this plan doesn't at any point involve us dressing up as Druids," she growled.

He looked adorably confused. "Why would we be dressing ourselves as worshippers of the stars?" he asked, nonplussed.

Sol giggled. She couldn't help it. His turn of phrase was just so funny. "Never mind, Loki, just as long as there is no dressing up!"

"There will be none," he said, quite seriously.

"Well that's a relief." She looked up, wondering how best to ask the question that teased her consciousness. She decided to go for the direct approach.

"Loki - I need to ask you something. In the other reality - your reality - how well did we know each other?"

"I think the answer to that question counts as Number Seven on the list of things that are for me to know and for you to wonder about."

Sol didn't think she wanted to ask about Numbers One to Six. She stammered back to the original subject of the conversation. "So, somehow, tomorrow, you want me to get you to Stonehenge. Do you have any ideas as to how to achieve this?"

He did. None of them were legal. Sol had decided that a life of crime wasn't really for her, and therefore objected to every one of his suggestions.

"For the last time, Loki, I will _not_ steal a car. It was a massive and improbable stroke of luck that we managed to pinch the one yacht nobody would want to admit to missing, but I can't believe that the same sort of thing will happen if we now attempt to make off with someone's car. That's called tempting fate, and I am not prepared to end up in prison. I gather you're fairly eager to avoid it yourself."

He snorted. "A prison on such a third-rate realm would be nothing compared to some of the places I have been."

Sol raised an eyebrow, folding her arms. "Third-rate or not, prison is prison, and in your current state I don't believe you'd deal with it as easily as you think."

She couldn't decide whether his subsequent silence was due to tact or boredom. Or plotting.

In the end Sol realised that she really didn't want to know how he had acquired the Jeep. At first she was furious - “I said specifically _NO STEALING_!” - but after he had gone all peculiar and stiff-jawed, she calmed down, if only to avoid a colossal row.

“I did not steal it,” he protested. “I convinced its previous owners to give it to me.”

Sol refused to get drawn into it. “I don't care what you did to get it, Loki. The fact is that this morning we did not have a car, and this afternoon, somehow, we do.”

Loki wanted to set the yacht adrift, but Sol thought that its owners should get their just deserts, so she left it moored in Southampton Docks with a note labelled “FAO Local Constabulary’. The superior extraterrestrial rolled his eyes wordlessly.

He was ominously quiet on the trip up the motorway to Salisbury, until Sol eventually got fed up with the brooding silence and subjected him to Aural Torture (his name for Radio 1). Apparently vampiric-looking aliens didn't enjoy Calvin Harris. Who knew?

A hundred years of chart music later, they arrived at Salisbury Plain. “Well, here we are,” announced Sol rather superfluously, as she had just pulled up in a layby and stopped the engine.

Loki said nothing, but his body had snap-changed from the languorous lines of slightly irritated boredom to a tightly coiled machine vibrating with tension. Was he excited? Happy? Anxious? Afraid? Sol found his emotional output nearly impossible to gauge. It was almost a relief when he let a sarcastic jibe roll from his tongue.

“Have none of you ever wondered why there is a vast, insanely complex and alien-looking stone sculpture in the middle of this frankly uninspiring patch of scrub?”

Sol folded her arms and deadpanned, “Oh no, I mean, it's _only_ one of England's biggest mysteries...”

He simply snorted. “Mystery. Well, I suppose there may be hope for you yet.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“That if you are still attempting to decipher it, you cannot be entirely without some sort of intelligence.”

Sol merely raised an eyebrow. She was rapidly coming to realise that what could be taken as insults were in fact usually evidences of his warped sense of humour. “So tell me, Loki… in your reality, what are you God of? I mean everybody knows Thor, God of thunder -”

“I suppose it would have been too much to hope for a reality where that _wasn't_ the case,” he muttered between his teeth.

Sol broke off to give him a look. “It's not as if he could really be understated, you know, with thunder being the way it is and all.”

He made a peculiar sound indicative of sarcastic contempt. “Understated? The dunderhead doesn't know the meaning of stealth. It's too quiet for him.”

“You know, I'm picking up on the _tiniest_ hint of animosity here… I suppose that's another possible for the list. So far I've got God of Sass, Inappropriate Humour, and Questionable Fashion Choices. I'll add God of Annoyed Sarcasm.”

He frowned. “You never used to be so irreverent. Perhaps my inexplicable absence from the pantheon of your ancestors did more harm than anyone imagines.”

Shaking her head at his pomposity, she opened her door and got out of the Jeep.

“You've got to learn to take yourself less seriously,” she began, but the sudden sharp wind ripped the words away. God! It was cold on the plain. Her padded gilet and black and gold scarf were not up to the challenge of keeping out this kind of weather. She cast an eye at the gathering clouds, the strange pinkish brown shadowing their fullness, and shivered.

“Loki!” she had to yell at him over the wind. “I think it's going to snow!”

He cocked his head and appeared to sniff the air before agreeing with her assessment. There was no concern evident in his manner or his face.

“Did you just sniff the air to tell the weather?” He scowled at that far more than at the prospect of a blizzard, and turned away abruptly, beginning to stalk toward the massive stones.

Sol followed him at a slight distance, unwilling to push ahead when he so clearly knew exactly what he was doing. As they reached the base of the nearest standing stone, he turned sharply, so unexpectedly that Sol ran straight into him. He did not catch her. She glared at him from the grassy, scrubby ground, which was harder than it looked.

“What the hell-” but whatever had been in her mind to say was cut off by his hand grabbing at her arm and lifting her to her feet as if she weighed nothing. Uneasily aware that she was standing too close to him, she tried to respect his personal space and back away, but his hands held her shoulders tightly. There were only three places to look: his face, his chest, or the ground. She chose the ground as being the safest option.

“You have helped me a great deal,” he said, and her heart did an alarming flip-flop into her throat. “Sol, I …” Whatever it was, it wouldn't come out. She felt his grip tighten on her arms, and heard the short, hard breath of frustration. “You must return now.”

Her head shot up. “What?”

He wouldn't look at her, eyes fixed somewhere distant behind her right shoulder. “You cannot accompany me. The damage has been extensive enough already, without adding to the confusion and pollution of this reality. Your place is here. I … am grateful for all that you have done, and I wish you well. I wish you very well.”

Sol stared at his pale face, set and resolute, and felt something from him that nearly took her breath away. His emotions were a riot beneath that cold, armoured exterior. She could not identify them, or even separate them from each other - but they were there, and she didn't know how they weren't tearing him apart.

She bowed her head, slowly. “I understand.”

His disbelief was palpable. “You do?”

She did, she really thought she did. “I do.”

“You will not attempt to travel further with me?”

“Not if you don't want me to.”

“I do not.” Well, full marks for speech succinct to the point of brutality. Not so much for honesty, if the emotions she felt from him were to be believed. But two could play at that game.

“Then we will say no more about it. Be safe, Loki. I hope you find what you are looking for.”

He nodded once and released her shoulders. “Farewell, Solrun.” She shut her eyes. When she opened them, he was nowhere to be seen.

But Sol was good at finding things.


	12. Regret From the Truth of a Thousand Lies

_He stares up at the faces of the ones he once called family. Brother, roaring at him in desperation; father, watching silently as his own resolution builds._

_"I could have done it!" And in that brief moment, a single grain of sand in the titanic hourglass of eternity, he almost believes that he could. "_ _For you! For all of us!"_

_It's the last time he will ever think of himself as being a part of that plural, because everything hangs on the response._

_"No, Loki."_

_No. Thor’s face shows that he can see the finality in Loki’s eyes, but Loki has had enough of his false family and their deceptive assurances. He does not know what he is thinking; everything - all his emotions, all his pain and rage and disappointment - rushes through his body like a bolt of lightning from that infernal hammer, and he releases his hold on the sceptre. It is an act of powerful symbolism. It will also kill him._

_Falling, falling, spiralling downward through the cracks in the cosmos, half in, half out of reality and consciousness… this is Purgatory, Limbo, all those deadly Betweens rolled into one great whirlpool of nothingness, and he is a fly on the ceiling of the universe, spinning helpless in the wake of forces beyond his comprehension._

 

         *    *    *    *

 

Consciousness surged back in on him like a waterfall of sensation. His extremities were tingling, his head felt light and foggy, and his eyes burned in their sockets behind tightly closed lids, but he felt more alive than he had in days. He searched in his mind for memories of what had just happened, but only succeeded in finding an impression of blinding green light that scorched through his veins. His eyes snapped open. Green! The colour of his _rún_. He had…

His thoughts stopped as though someone had broadsided him with a battleaxe.

His eyes, still burning from the exercised power, drank in the golden spires above him, their fluted towers reaching for the clouds that floated across the idyllic sky. The golden city. Asgard. He was home.

Home? Where had that come from? His home was on a planet of barren ice fields, not this realm of gold and sunlight. Still, it was nice to see the place looking its best again. It had been a long time since he had been able to look at it and admit its beauty.

Gradually, his memories began to seep back through this strange nostalgia. The standing stones. The weak spot, the portal. Sol. No, he didn't want to think about Sol.

The golden city… he shook his head to dispel the feeling that something was wrong. Asgard was where he wanted to be. Wasn't it? Getting to Asgard meant getting to Yggdrasil, which meant getting back to the Earth and the Sol he remembered. He had spent too much time in the other reality already; but the longer he stayed, the more damage he could cause. It was far better for him to be back in his own universe, where the damage he caused was of a different kind.

He rose from the ground a little unsteadily. His power still felt depleted, more than he expected from returning to his own realm, but he supposed that opening and travelling through the portal in the alternate reality had drained him.

He dusted himself off, frowning at his Midgardian attire. It would never do to arrive at the gates of Asgard dressed like a strange peasant. Come to think of it, arriving at the gates of Asgard looking like himself wasn't exactly ideal. He took a deep breath, moving his hands back and forth to weave a fabric from the threads of his _rún_ , a glamour cast over his appearance (ironic, since his normal appearance was itself an illusion, woven from infancy so much into his being that it was involuntary) to put himself into the guise of a palace guard. He had used it before. It had never felt so painful in the past. The illusion shivered, hitched, and vanished like a guttering candle. Damn! He must be weaker than he had thought.

Dusk was beginning to fall, which was fortunate for him in his current state. It would be easier to get to the Bifrost Gate in the Observatory without being observed if he could keep to the shadows. His progress along the cliffs was slow, his path hugging the mass of the black rocks that rose from the sea in order to utilise their shadow.

Stealing a wingboat was a feat he had helped orchestrate before, but he hadn't done it alone - though it had to be said that the lack of handcuffs this time did expedite things somewhat. Also the lack of idiots to hold up the proceedings - though perhaps that wasn't entirely fair. They had asked for his help, after all, so maybe they were more astute than they looked. Even now it was still surprising to him that Thor had enlisted his aid on the day that now seemed so long ago, and nothing short of bizarre that the others had agreed to it, although he supposed that their blind devotion to Thor would make them agree to the most insane ideas. Such as putting their overenthusiastic, heavy-handed ringleader on the throne, for example. Strangely, the time when Thor was finally shaping up to be a decent ruler was the time when he decided he didn't want to be king - a paradox that Loki found difficult to untangle.

He shook his head, trying to stop the chaotic thoughts from taking too strong a hold on his conscious mind. Thinking back to those days brought the danger of remembering his own mental state at the time and experiencing it afresh. He tried to empty his brain of unnecessary things, and concentrated on steering the wingboat toward Heimdall’s Observatory, relishing the rush of Asgardian air full into his face. Say what you would about the Realm Eternal, it certainly had a bracingly unique atmosphere, rather refreshing after the slightly sense-dulling environment of Midgard. No wonder Midgardians were so often naive and ignorant; they were fighting their own stupefying atmosphere as well as centuries of arrested development courtesy of overprotective Aesir rulers who considered it their duty to stop the primitive little mortals from getting ahead of themselves. In Midgardian terms, Asgardian interference was the equivalent of a parent who sees his child with a pair of scissors and, instead of teaching the child to be careful with sharp tools, takes the scissors away and denies access to anything remotely dangerous, ‘just in case you hurt yourself’.

His memory took him to an event in his life that he had all but forgotten. His first trip into the Cave of Time, when he had worked out how to get around the complicated ethical and legal ramifications as well as evading the Time Keepers. That would probably have been bad enough, but he was never one to do anything by halves - fully aware that it would change human history forever, he had taken Asgardian fire to Midgard at a time when its inhabitants needed it in order to progress.

 

*    *    *    *

 

_"I was the one who saw their potential!"_ _he argues, standing bold and tall in front of Odin, a boy on the verge of manhood, trying desperately not to show any fear even though his stomach is churning. Fear is weakness. Thor never shows fear. Thor is strong, and Asgard loves him. If Loki can be strong like his brother, maybe Asgard will love him too._

_"Everyone said No, they are too primitive, too gullible, too easily overwhelmed by the mysterious and ethereal. I was the one who gave them fire. I was the one who gifted them the heat and light that changed their destiny forever. In later years they called me Prometheus, the bringer of fire. I have seen it in the Cave of Time! I was worshipped twice for my gift! They appreciated my ‘interference’, as you termed it. Were it not for me, they would still be living in caves, dictated to by your every whim and relying on your strength to protect them from their enemies."_   


_The Allfather is not impressed by this speech._

_"You think you speak to them still? Do not delude yourself -  remember that I know you. You gave them fire because you were told not to, and because you thought it would cause havoc. It was sheer luck that they were clever enough not to play into your hands with it."_  
_  
Loki rolls his eyes with a grimace, annoyance and hurt hardening themselves into a mask of sarcasm._

_"Oh, of course, I always have bad motives. Nothing I do is ever prompted by anything but a selfish desire to cause mischief and destruction."_   
  
_That gesture he dreads, has always dreaded - the shake of the white head, the slight sag of the shoulders that usually square in pride over Thor’s accomplishments. Such a small gesture to crush his own pride so completely._

_"You were always troublesome, but what is excusable in a child is not so easily overlooked in an adult."_

_Loki wishes that he could defend himself with better weapons than sarcasm and biting, dry wit, but the problem is that he can no longer remember his true motives in giving fire to humankind. Like the boy who cried wolf, he has caused mischief too many times, and now his future is snapping at his heels and baring its teeth. The irony is that in giving them fire, he gave them the means to destroy him, when the Allfather is convinced he wished them to destroy themselves._

 

 *    *    *    *

  


A whining burst, a sharp crackle, and the memory fizzled out like a damp ember as the present reasserted itself. The guard cannons, apparently alerted to his presence despite his precautions. Damnation! This cursed sentiment, this need to revisit his miserable past… it did nothing but cause harm.

A particularly well-aimed shot impacted on the stern of his wingboat, knocking the propulsion to Niflheim and sending the boat into a spinning freefall. Loki clung desperately to the rudder, fighting for control as the vessel shuddered and spiralled, heading toward the water at alarming velocity. He had enough impetus left to allow time for regaining a little control, and he used it to force the broken wingboat toward the rocks at the city end of the rainbow bridge. He had overshot his target considerably, but he could think about getting back to the Observatory later on. First he had to survive a crash landing on the rocky beach.

He bent his knees and tried to relax his muscles as the wingboat smashed, with a bone-shattering jolt, into the shingle over the other side of the rocks, curling into a defensive ball until he could feel that the vessel had come to a complete stop.

It shrieked and groaned its way along the pebbles and finally ground to a halt about three quarters of the way up the beach.

Cautiously, Loki opened first one, then both of his eyes, and began to assess the situation. Bones broken: none. Muscles strained: five, possibly six. Bruises, scrapes, and other contusions: numerous. Einherjar staring at him menacingly: four.

“Who are you and what is your business here? You have stolen a vessel belonging to the Asgard Defense Corps, and compounded this crime by destroying it. State your name and intentions.”

He raised his hands rather shakily. “Alright, Thor, you can come out now, joke’s over.”

The warrior guards looked startled, and muttering broke out among them. The biggest one advanced toward Loki, spear raised in suspicion. “Who are you, that dares speak our King’s name so freely?”

“Very amusing. I know I am supposed to be dead, but obviously Thor knows the truth now, since you refer to him as king… and I know I haven't been exactly the model of brotherly devotion, but still, I am family, even if I was adopted, isn't that right, Thor?”

Their perturbation seemed to increase tenfold.

“Stop gawping like a bunch of Alfheim mountain goats and just take me to your king. We may as well get this over with as soon as possible. It was inevitable, I suppose.”

He rose to his feet and began to walk up the beach, assisted on his way by the Einherjar and their spears.

Thor’s palace and perimeter guards were clearly not hired for their scintillating conversational abilities. But then, muscle and courage were the two most praised attributes in Aesir culture, so that was not really surprising. Loki walked silently in the middle of them, marvelling at their stone-faced loyalty.

It was not until they reached the palace that the feeling of wrongness intensified again. Everything was so perfect, so glowing; the aurelian walls were intact, every arch and column in its rightful place; it was just as Loki remembered it, true, but as a coruscant memory from his childhood and not as he had known it in recent times.

“Who did Thor hire to clean up the mess?” demanded the suspicious ex-ruler of Asgard. “It must have cost him a pretty penny. Even my seiðr isn't powerful enough to do this good a job!”

More confused glances were exchanged by the guards.

Muttering various choice epithets that expressed his opinion of their intellectual capacity, Loki fell back into step with them and puzzled over Asgard’s rapid return to glory. The political situation when Loki left would have been hard for anyone to unravel and nigh-on impossible to be so quickly rectified, and whatever his thoughts regarding Thor’s wisdom or lack thereof, he had not believed his adoptive brother so shallow as to put an extensive and elaborate rebuilding of the palace and surrounding city at the top of his list of priorities. It made no sense.

His suspicion grew with each step toward the throne room, until by the time the vast double doors were flung open, his spine felt as though an icy creature were coiling around it.

The man he had once called brother was sitting on the throne, Mjolnir resting on the marble flagstones within easy reach of his massive arm. His beard was long, with small, intricate braids worked into it, and he had changed his usual scarlet cloak for a heavier, more elaborate crimson affair, uncomfortably similar in appearance and style to the coronation robe that Loki had conjured in a self-indulgent, wistful illusion once upon a very different time.

Thor rose from the throne as the guards approached with their charge in tow, his brow knitting. Loki was feeling so off balance that he was not sure what he expected Asgard’s new monarch to say, but whatever it may have been, it certainly wasn't, “Who is this?” in a tone of completely sincere inquiry.

He opened his mouth, but before he could force any coherent words into the air, the Einherjar directly behind him said, helpfully, “Sire - he says he is your brother.”

Thor’s face was blank and bewildered. “My brother? But… I have no brother.”

_Welcome to Asgard_ , thought Loki, realisation dawning on him at last - _just not **my** Asgard _.


	13. Memory is a Sea of Sand

“Oh dear,” said Loki, trying to keep his tone light and nonchalant. “I must have made a mistake. Now, if you don't mind, I should be going…” His path on either side was blocked by a guard - how remarkably solid they looked, to be sure! - and the king who was not his brother was still moving toward him, the frown on his face deepening with each step he took. 

“A strange mistake to make,” he said, quietly but with a warning rumble resounding through the lower register of his voice. Loki knew that tone well. It was never any good trying to argue with Thor once he was suspicious. He might lack the quicksilver, razor wit of his adopted brother, but he was incredibly tenacious, which sometimes made him a difficult opponent. Most people were easily sidetracked, distracted from the issue by a swift, clever misdirection. Thor, like a charging bull, could seldom be so quickly shaken from his aim. 

“I am aware that these are peculiar circumstances,” said Loki, clearing his throat to hide the crack in his voice. 

“Peculiar? That seems rather an understatement. It isn't every day I receive a visit from someone claiming to be a relative I didn't know I had.”

Loki shrugged. “I would have thought it would happen quite often, with you being royalty. People with power and wealth usually have whole realms full of relations, who somehow disappear once the power and wealth fade.” 

“You are enigmatic,” Thor decided, “and I find myself uncertain whether you are entirely sane.” 

A rough-edged laugh forced its way from Loki’s throat, snagging on his lips as it passed them. “Sane? I'm not sure I've ever been that.” 

At this juncture he suddenly became aware of another presence in the throne room, and turned his head to see who it was, at the same time that Thor said with a distinct overtone of relief, 

“Ah, Mother!”

Loki echoed, “Mother?”

His whole being breathed the word. He knew it was ridiculous to say it, for this Frigga had never raised him, had never known him at all - but it was out before he could stop it. 

She stood there, regal, beautiful, shining, just as he always chose to remember her. It was only in his worst dreams that his heart refused to listen to his mind, and showed his true last memory of her, sadness and piercing knowledge in her eyes as he rejected her. 

**_“Then am I not your mother_ ** _?” _

His heart twisted as he tried to block the memory. His own words had been unforgivable. She may not have been his mother by blood, but she was the only one he had ever known, and she had certainly never done anything to deserve such base, childish ingratitude. He had long since run out of excuses. The truth - how he hated truth when it stung and clawed inside his gut like some vile, accusatory parasite! - the  _ truth  _ was that her blood was on his hands. The sword that killed her may have borne a Svartalf blade, but he, Loki, her son, was responsible for her death, and he hadn't even said farewell. He had been locked away in his white, smashed cell while they prepared her lifeless body for the funeral ceremony, and his heart had broken with a wrenching scream as they set light to her boat and launched her spirit into the universe. 

A voice in his head - his conscience, he supposed - rather vindictively reminded him that it was no more than he deserved. 

Frigga looked at him with the soft, deep gaze he had so often ached to see again. But she did not know him. He could  _ taste  _ the confusion. 

"Who is this man?" she asked Thor. 

"I do not know," came the careful reply. "He is, I think, afflicted with some disease of the mind, for he says he is my brother." 

The expression in her eyes changed to pity, and she moved swiftly across the marble flagstones to get a closer look. "What is your name?" she inquired softly. 

He fought back the tears. Tears were weak, foolish, not to be shed by a man claiming to be Thor's brother. "Your majesty... I am Loki." 

Not a spark of recognition. "An unusual name," she said, mildly curious but no more than that. 

He swallowed. "My… my mother gave it to me."

She inclined her head. "I like the name. It has a certain melody to it. What is your business here, Loki?" 

He lowered his eyes. "I came seeking something I lost, but I do not know that I will ever truly find it again."  

"And what is it you seek so earnestly, Loki?" Her voice was low, gentle, painfully kind.

"My home," he whispered.

She turned back to Thor. "Cannot something be done to help him?" 

"I do not know."

Loki rolled his eyes.  _ Of course you don't, you idiot. Even across alternate realities, some things never change.  _ For some reason this was comforting. He'd never thought that one day he would welcome even Thor's thick head.  _ I must be truly desperate _ , he thought with heavy irony. The damnable symmetry of the situation was not lost on him. 

Two more Einherjar entered the throne room, escorting someone none too gently. Loki didn't really pay much attention; he was too busy drinking in the fact that his mother, or at least her alternate, was standing in front of him. He may have refused to refer to Odin as his father once he knew the truth, but he had never been quite able to distance himself from her in the same way. After her death he had locked his love for her away in a very safe niche of his heart, chained and vaulted and plunged into eternal darkness. He had determined never to think of her again. To allow her into his conscious mind was to invite pain and grief, and such sentiments were weakening to the soul. But now that her alternate was there, alive, looking at him, all the locks and bars flew apart, and his body and heart were flooded with unwanted emotions, and his mind reeled from confusion. 

"Your majesty... I crave indulgence for this interruption, but we found  _ this _ wandering the halls," said one of the Einherjar gruffly. 

"I'm a  _ person,  _ you bloody Gestapo, not an object!" protested their captive in familiar tones. 

Loki's head snapped round. " _ Sol _ ?" 

She was struggling against the grip of the two guards. Loki could have told her it was useless - their naturally superior Asgardian strength had been honed and trained specifically for their position. A mortal, even one with powers beyond the usual, could not hope to escape their iron grasp. One thing he knew about Sol, though, was that ridiculous odds against her never seemed to make the slightest difference to her determination. 

"I'll talk to  _ you _ later," she said to him in an ominous voice . 

"Would someone please explain what is going on?" Thor's voice boomed out, silencing everyone. 

The Einherjar who had spoken before cleared his throat. "Your majesty... this mortal was trespassing in your palace. I do not know how she came here. I can only assume that she somehow spied upon this… visitor," inclining his head toward Loki, "and followed his course into the city." 

"Spied upon him?" spluttered Sol. "You're damn right I spied upon him. He tried to leave me behind!" 

Thor's massive brow furrowed. "You know her?" he asked Loki. 

"I do," he replied with a sigh. He should have known better than to trust Sol's compliant attitude. She was never going to do as she was told. And to be fair, he would probably have done exactly the same in her situation.

"Know me? Hell, I saved his life!" said Sol, apparently exacting revenge. 

"Be silent!" rumbled Thor. For once Loki found himself in charity with his brother's opinion. 

Sol scowled, but subsided with only a small grumble. 

"Is what she says true?" 

Loki nodded. "In fact, yes." 

"Then she is your responsibility," said the king. He turned to the guards. "Release her and give her to our... visitor." 

They complied, shoving her toward Loki. 

"You should not have come." 

"Nice to see you too!" 

They stared each other down for a moment. Loki gritted his teeth, trying to control his temper.

"I instructed you to stay where you were. I thought I was very clear. Evidently I was not clear enough. When I tell you not to follow me, I mean it." 

"You were crystal clear, Loki. I understood you perfectly. I just chose to ignore your very careful instructions. That's my fault, not yours. But I couldn't just let you go wandering off into an alternate reality by yourself." 

"I am not a child, to require your supervision!" 

"For someone who isn't a child, you certainly have a way of acting like one!" 

Their voices were rising in volume and harshness; each glared into the other's eyes. 

"Enough!" Thor's deep voice cut in on their private moment of all-absorbing mutual anger. "If you do not cease this unseemly wrangling I shall lock you both away in the dungeons, there to remain until such a time as I see fit to release you." 

"I beg your pardon, your majesty," said Loki, smoothly so that no-one would ever know how hard it was for him to say any of that.  

Thor inclined his head. "Can you take charge of this mortal? Are you capable of ensuring that she stays with you at all times and does not trespass again?"

"Your majesty," said Sol, and despite himself Loki had to admire the steadiness of her voice, "I am sorry I trespassed. I was looking for Loki. Now I've found him, I can safely promise you nothing short of Ragnarok will get me away from him." 

Thor hissed, gripping the arms of his throne with both his mighty hands. "You dare speak of that cursed prophecy in my presence?" 

Loki stepped in. "Your majesty, she is an ignorant mortal who does not understand the dire significance of the words she utters."

Thor relaxed. "Of course, of course..." he looked suddenly rueful - open and almost humorous, like the golden-haired little boy Loki remembered from a past long ago and not of this reality. It was a strangely incongruous expression on his strong,  bearded face. "I have not had many dealings with Midgardians of late. I think I am out of practise." 

"They do take some getting used to," agreed Loki. 

He and his pseudo-brother looked at Sol's fulminating glare, and then back at each other, and a miracle happened. The laughter bubbled up inside them and erupted in a burst of loud, joyous, united mirth. Two brothers who were not brothers threw their heads back and howled with laughter in unison. It was bizarre, impossible, but it felt like coming home. 

Thor wiped the tears of amusement from his startling blue eyes. "Funny creatures, mortals!"

Loki decided not to risk saying anything else. As it was, Sol was probably going to kill him, without him compounding the situation. 

Sol glared up at him savagely, and bowed to Thor. “Your majesty,” she said, with a sweet smile. “Please forgive me for the intrusion and my apparent lack of understanding. I don't know much about the way things are done here, so I crave your pardon. I know I shouldn't be here at all - I was just trying to make sure that this idiot didn't get himself killed. You would think that he’d appreciate my concern, but he is the most awkward and contrary person I've ever met, so I don't know why I'm surprised that he is being so rude.” 

Loki refused to look at her. It was childish to continue in this manner, trading insults and sharp glances. A better result could be obtained by means of a cold and dignified silence, letting her know his displeasure without the need for - 

“Ow!” 

She had stamped on his toe, the little- 

“How dare you attack me in this manner?” he snarled, forgetting his strategy of dignified silence and seizing her wrists in an iron grip. 

“I was trying to see if I could annoy you as much as you annoy me,” she replied. 

“Believe me, you annoy me far more than that!”

Thor was beginning to make noises reminiscent of an irritated wolf, but before he could pass irascible sentence on the miscreants trying his patience, Frigga stepped forward to address Sol. 

“You followed him here? To protect him?”

“I don't need protecting,” muttered Loki, but was subdued to silence by the look his not-quite-mother gave him. 

“To make sure he didn't get himself killed, yes,” replied Sol, adding an uncertain, “... your majesty,” after a split second of thought. 

“You are Midgardian, yes?” 

“Midgard… Earth. Yes, I'm human.” 

Frigga inclined her head toward her son. “Thor, if you could occupy our visitor for a little while without wringing his neck or throwing him into the dungeons, I think this young woman and I have a few things to discuss.” 

Apparently nobody gainsaid the king’s mother, least of all the king himself, who looked decidedly sheepish and ordered the guards to stand down from Sol and Loki. 

Frigga led Sol out of the throne room and along a corridor that eventually opened out onto an arched balcony. 

“Now, my dear,” said the queen, resting the heels of her hands against the balcony parapet, “I suggest you begin at the beginning. Tell me everything you know about your friend.” 


	14. I'm Not Evil, Just Misunderstood

Something told Sol that there would be no point at all in trying to tell Frigga anything less than the truth. There was steel beneath the gentle, kind exterior, and a certain sharpness half-hidden in her soft eyes. The difficulty was that Sol herself felt rather inadequately qualified for the task of explaining things.

“I … your Majesty, I don’t really think I’m the person to ask about this. I don’t know all that much about him.”

A tiny shake of the golden head accompanied Frigga’s response, “I would not have asked you if I thought he would tell me himself. And besides, you were prepared to walk into the royal city - into the throne room itself - and confront my son, all to try and save Loki from perceived danger. I think perhaps you know more about him than you believe.”

Sol flushed uncomfortably. At this point, she was so unsure of her own feelings toward Loki that she didn’t exactly feel happy about them being brought up by anyone else. “I _do_ know some things,” she admitted with caution. “He lets things slip occasionally - it isn’t easy for him to open up, I think. I’ve sort of pieced things together from what he has said… and some things he _hasn’t_ said.”

Frigga folded her hands in front of her skirts. Her face, in the soft light of the torches that were bracketed around the walls, was deadly earnest. “You must tell me everything ... Sol?”

Sol nodded, acknowledging her name. “Well… it’s difficult to know where to begin. He tells me that he’s not from this universe. He is from another reality, and came here by some total fluke… something to do with fire and injuries and branches of Yggdrasil - it seemed to fit together at the time, but it’s kind of complicated and I’m not sure I can explain it properly. Anyway, the point is that where he comes from things are the same, but somehow different. Am I making any sense?"

Frigga smiled. "I am no stranger to bizarre truths. He is not of our cosmos, then. But... he calls Thor his brother...?"

This part was hard to express in words. Sol couldn't quite meet the eyes of the King's Mother. "In his... cosmos... he was adopted. By - by your husband, I suppose. He was raised as your son. He is very bitter, and he won't discuss it unless pushed to it. He wasn't told who he was, you see. He didn't know. He thought... he thought he was your son. And when he found out the truth, I think it sort of broke something inside him. He is so full of bitterness and insecurity, it blinkers and hampers him."

Frigga's guarded expression reminded Sol very much of Loki. There was a surprising amount of his adoptive mother in him.

"That is sad," said the queen quietly. "There is, I think, greatness in him, the potential to be something wonderful, if only he could see past the doubt and resentment that are strong enough for me to sense within a moment of setting eyes on him."

Sol nodded. "I think so too."

Frigga frowned, a tiny furrow puckering her forehead in yet another mirror expression of Loki's. "What else do you know of him, Sol? There is something... I sensed something different about him, and I cannot quite identify what it is. The displacement is obviously a result of his not belonging in this cosmos, but there is something else too... who is he, really?"

"I'm not sure. He won't talk about it really. Only once, and that was only because I'd said some things that made him furious and he forgot to keep a lid on it. But he did say that he is the offspring of your enemy. That he was snatched from a war zone. And he keeps referring to himself as a monster. I don't know if it's just figurative or whether there's a literal truth behind it. He's quite cryptic sometimes."  

Frigga had gone pale; her fingers entwined and danced with each other in a nervous gesture.  " _Helheim_ ," she breathed the curse through her teeth."Our enemy? Is it possible...? I suppose Jotun blood would explain the slightly wild foreign element I sensed. But why would Odin have taken him from Jotunheim during the war?" Her eyes narrowed suddenly. "Sol, _whose son is he_?"

Sol faltered under her piercing gaze. "I - I don't know. He didn't specify names or places. Just that he is illegitimate and hates his origins. No! I'm wrong. He did mention something a bit more specific, in passing. He said that there were two kings at war, and he was abandoned by one of the kings..."

Frigga leant back with a deep sigh. " _Laufey._ He is _Laufey's son._ Sol, you must take your friend away from here as soon as possible."

"Why?" Sol was bewildered by the queen's evident fervour.

"Thor must never find out who he is. He must leave Asgard immediately, before his identity is revealed."

Sol’s eyebrow quirked sarcastically. "I highly doubt he's going to go up to Thor and say 'By the way, I'm Laufey's son' - whatever that means anyway. He doesn't like to talk about it."

"There are other ways for the revelation to occur," said Frigga darkly. "This _must not happen._ Do you understand? It means the difference between life and death for Loki. If Thor discovers his identity, he will kill him." She turned away, her hand to her pale throat.

Sol gaped. " _Kill_ him? Thor? Surely he wouldn't!"

"He will not take delight in it!" snapped Frigga, whirling around to sear Sol with her eyes. "It's the prophecy, you see. We did not know it, but your friend is our worst enemy."

"What? Loki? Now just hang on a minute..."

"He does not even know it himself," Frigga continued, calmer now. "In his reality no doubt things are different. In this cosmos, however, there is a prophecy that no-one has ever fully comprehended. It is mysterious, cryptic, and strange... but it foretells the end of Asgard, caused by a creature from another place, a creature of ice and smooth speech, a monster who hides in the guise of beauty. That is part of the reason for our war with the Jotnar. I fear that nobody was totally honest about it. It was not a war so much as total extermination. We were in utter dread of the frost giants because of that prophecy. Once they were all destroyed, we breathed easier, believing we had cheated Fate. But now, your friend comes to us from a different cosmos, and he is one of that race... he hides in the guise of beauty... Sol, do you not see? Loki is everything Thor fears most, and he will not hesitate to destroy him once he knows the truth. It is his duty to protect Asgard and all the realms. He will see it as his only choice."

The air, which until now had been pleasantly warm with a gentle breeze drifting through it, suddenly became very oppressive. The darkness of the night sky seemed ominous now. Sol felt dizzy. "Oh my God. I have to get him out of here," she whispered.

"He will not want to leave," the queen warned her. "This Asgard is not his, but it still exerts a strong hold over him. He will fight. But you must prevail upon him to leave immediately, before it is too late. Take him away by whatever means necessary - save him ... and save _us_."

*    *    *    *

 

To be honest, Sol would have preferred a fight. She had seen him angry before, boiling with frustration or seething with indignation - intimidating though such a reaction undoubtedly was, it would have been better than the haunted look in his eyes when she tried to impress upon him the urgency of the situation after Frigga had brought him onto the balcony and then withdrawn back into the throne room.

“Do not ask me to leave, not yet. I need a little more time here.”

She shook her head. “Loki, you aren’t listening to me. We have to leave before … whatever it is … happens. I’m informed it won’t be good.”

“And _you_ are not listening to _me_ . I cannot leave yet. Give me a little longer…” He dipped his head, and she could not be entirely sure, but she thought she caught his _please_ on a whisper so soft it was barely more than a breath.

“I don’t know why you want to stay so much, given that it isn’t even your reality...” His head lifted, and she tailed off, startled by the level of emotion in his face. He looked in pain. “Loki, what is the matter with you?”

He snapped, his face hardening as he lashed out indiscriminately, like a snake that has been stirred up with a sharp stick. “What is the matter with me is that my mother is _dead_ and it’s my fault. So forgive me for my moment of weakness and self-pity, but this is the last time I will ever see her. I have been given a chance that not one in a quadrillion beings ever receives - a chance to see her again, to hear her voice … perhaps even to redeem myself in some small way. And you would tear that away from me. You'd rob me of it.”

Sol couldn’t formulate words.

He leaned on the balcony parapet, staring blankly out across the dimly lit training circle underneath. Presently he gave a short, breathy laugh, and waved a hand at the view. “My erstwhile brother used to spend hours in that circle - or, at least, in the corresponding circle in _my_ Asgard.  Everyone laughed at me because I preferred the company of my books to the enjoyment of beating scarecrows to a pulp… and then each other, once he and his friends progressed far enough. They never knew that I would go down there at night when they were all asleep, to practice my own arts. _She_ taught me how. I think she felt that I should have something with which to defend myself. She knew I would need it. The funny thing was that though I was never up to their standard of _brawn_ , I learnt to wield my weapons with more grace and skill than they ever bothered to achieve. I am no weakling,” he had turned back toward Sol, chest heaving, eyes hard, “and they underestimated me constantly. My _seiðr_ was considered weaker than their bodily strength, a woman’s work, somehow less than muscle alone. But when they started to see the things I could do - even then, for I have always been a quick learner - they learned instead to distrust and eye me askance. They could no longer call me _argr_ , womanish - something that nobody ever dared call Lady Sif, who _was_ a woman! - so instead they called me _ljúgasveinn_ , child of lies. Loki Ljúgasveinn, ha. None of us realised back then just how close to the truth they were.”

Sol was trying to process the sudden tsunami of information. “Your mother helped you stand up for yourself?”

“Oh yes, she always did. She was the only one who seemed to believe that being different can be a good thing. I never did fit in very well. I suppose blood tells, and although I am of Asgard by upbringing, I am of Jotunheim by birth, and the two are impossible to reconcile.”

The mention of his birth-race shook Sol out of the information daze she had fallen into. “Exactly - they can’t be reconciled, and that is why we have to leave. This isn’t my choice, Loki, it’s a request from your mother. She wants us gone.”

His eyes were full of disbelief. “She wishes me to leave?”

“I don’t understand all the details, but it’s something to do with your heritage and a prophecy. She is convinced something really bad will happen if we stay. Please. I understand that you want to stay with her a bit longer, but she is afraid for you. She begged me to make you leave.”

He was completely still, staring her in the face to gauge the truth of her words, a vein at his temple throbbing in silent fury. Finally he swung away and pounded the parapet with the edge of his fists. His knuckles were bright white, clenched so tightly that when he lifted his hands from the stone Sol could see trickles of blood oozing, shiny and sticky, along the furrows below his smallest fingers. He hissed between his teeth, “I am no coward, no matter what they all have thought of me over the centuries. I will not leave, I will not run back to Midgard like a frightened little girl. _You_ may return if you wish, but I must see this through to its end.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying - the end of this could be something terrible!”

He snarled, spinning around on his heels and making a sweeping gesture with his hands. Something happened as he did so - Sol was only dimly aware of a weird green glow before she was shot backwards feeling as though she had been poleaxed. She lay on the ground, her head whirling, a distinct bruising sensation beginning to spread through the region of her solar plexus, and a strange prickling raising her skin into electrified goosebumps. She wasn’t sure if it was an effect of her spinning head, but the air seemed to be crackling.

Loki was kneeling beside her, moving his hands through the air directly above her prone body and muttering words that sounded faintly familiar yet also foreign and muddled to her ears. The ache began to fade, and her head slowly righted itself.

She took a deep breath. “What the _hell_ was that?”

He had the grace to look the tiniest bit conscience-stricken. “That … was unexpected.”

“If you found it unexpected, imagine how I feel!”

“I got angry. Things sometimes happen, though I hadn’t thought … no matter.”

She struggled to a sitting position, slapping his hands away. “Is this what you meant earlier, about the things you could do? The defensive arts your mother taught you?”

He nodded. “I am much weakened by my travels through this reality, but I still have a little power. It seems to be less controllable here. I did not intend to hurt you.”

She eyed him for a moment, then sighed and held out her hand. “I suppose that’s the closest thing to an apology I can expect from you - here, help me up.”

He lifted her to her feet, refusing to make eye contact. “You should go.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I see. That little temper tantrum was your way of trying to make me leave. Well, I’m sorry, Oz, but that’s not how I work, and you should know that by now.”

“Oz?” He looked both irritated and confused.

“As in, the Wizard of …?” His expression did not change. “Forget it. And forget trying to make me run away without you. Either we both leave, or we both stay. Though I don’t know what I’m going to tell your mother if we do stay.”

His eyes blanked. She guessed that there was a great deal more going on here than he was prepared to explain.The woman who was not his mother; the man who was not his brother; this whole world that was not really his - and yet he was so desperate to stay despite warnings.

He was staring out across the balcony again, and she decided to wait it out. His expression told her that interruptions would be unwelcome, and she had no desire to receive a repeat performance of his electric temper.  

They stood in silence looking down at the training circle, and the stars shone brighter and brighter in the crushed-velvet vault above.


	15. What a Twisted Family We Are

 

_Loki lies on his back, staring at the ceiling of his ‘chamber’ and absently tossing a small goblet up into the air and catching it as it falls back toward his face. Sometimes he waits for his automatic reflexes to kick in, wondering idly if this time they will fail and allow the pewter receptacle to smash painfully into the bones of his face - but every time, his hand snatches the heavy little thing just in the nick of time. It would be of no consequence anyway. Would anyone care if the Trickster of Jotunheim (for since the Midgard débâcle even Thor has abandoned the pretense that his errant adopted brother is ‘of Asgard’) were to sport a few fresh bruises, or even to mar his peculiar beauty with a broken nose? They would probably assume it was some kind of sympathy vote. He huffs a silent, cynical laugh at the thought, and sits up, swinging his feet over the side of the bed and placing the goblet on a small wooden table nearby._

_This cell at least is more comfortable than the last. He is given many conveniences, and each one smarts like a tipped arrow in the gaping wound that marks where his soul used to be. He is being humoured, his fate softened with a sop, the stark lines of his destiny in this oubliette blurred for the consciences of those who condemn him. He snarls at the feather cushions, at the understated luxury of the clothes he is given, at the opulent quality of the furniture._   
  
_Frigga visits him. Not in person - even she would not take that risk, for he is to be forgotten most ostensibly, and visitation is outlawed in order to expedite this sentence - but her mirage flickers before him, offering a comfort he is not ready to accept. She brings him books, knowing that his busy, complex mind requires nourishment just as his body does, otherwise it will begin to devour itself. Unfortunately, her efforts come too late; the rot is already set in and his mind is a nest of horrid things skittering, scratching, muttering, savaging each other and himself along with them._   
  
_Eventually he speaks to her, but it is not what she wishes to hear. He cuts at her psyche with words, unable to touch her in any other way._   
  
_"At last I understand. I was always different. Of course I didn’t know just how different, but I think all along I sensed I was not the same as everyone else. And then in a blinding, sickening flash it all made sense! How Odin must be laughing now! I am the unsuccessful end of his colossal joke, and everyone is wondering what to do with the silence that follows."_   
  
_His tongue floods the cell with poisonous rivers of hurt and retaliation. She stands there, silent, regarding him with quietly appraising eyes, and the pity behind them makes him flinch._   
  
_"I am not one of you. I never was, and I never will be_ _."_   
  
_She speaks then. "_ _You have always been one of us, my son."_   
  
_He strikes back without thinking, quick as a snake. "_ _I am not your son. I know what my father was - what was my mother? Certainly not you."_   
  
_She smiles, but the curve of her lips encompasses a whole world of sorrowful love, and his broken heart, black as it is, still punishes him for his cruelty to the one person who may truly love him._ _  
_ _"Loki, my sweet boy, you were mine from the moment I looked into your eyes. I held you in my arms, this tiny, perfect thing, and you opened your eyes and the look you gave me went right to my heart. You have always been mine. You simply refuse to see that."_

_She always knew him too well. It is what makes her at once so dear and so dangerous._

_And then he is falling again. Strange, for his mind knows full well that the fall happened before the cell - long before._

_Falling…_

_Down, down, down …_

_Voices. No! Shut them out._

_Clamouring, hissing, spiteful, calling his name in mockery._

_"Loki! Loki!"_

_He swats them away like flies, but like flies they keep returning to buzz in his brain._

_"Loki! Loki!"_

*     *     *     *

“Loki!”

He woke with a start to find Sol shaking his shoulder.

“What in the name of - oh, it’s you.”

She made a funny face. “Sorry to disappoint.”

He ignored this. “Did I fall asleep here?” They were on the balcony again, which was odd because he distinctly remembered preparing for sleep in a small but beautifully furnished chamber provided by the king of Asgard for his unexpected guest despite Frigga’s growing agitation.

“No,” said Sol. “Apparently you sleep- _walk_ as well as sleep- _talk._ ”

How embarrassing. “And you followed me in my somnambulation?”

“I’m a light sleeper, and we have connecting rooms. I heard you talking again, and I came in to see if you were ok… and found you going out of the door. I realised you weren’t awake, and yes, I followed you. And now I’ve woken you up. Everyone says not to do that, but your dreams seem so rotten that I never feel I can just let you carry on.”

His attention was fixed on a bright star in the night sky; he was trying to process the fact that apart from the initial twinge of embarrassment he did not overly _mind_ being so vulnerable in front of Sol. Part of him wanted to justify this with the idea that it was their other-world kinship that made him feel comfortable with her - but he knew, really, that it was spurious reasoning. He would never have allowed Other Sol to see him in such a condition. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her … actually, that was _exactly_ what it was. However much he had enjoyed her company, there had always been a tiny fear, a wariness that came as a result of her essential unpredictability. Not that This Sol was _predictable_ precisely, but somehow she was safe, safer by far than her alter ego. Other Sol challenged him in ways that exhilarated and made him feel dangerously alive even as he was furious with her. This Sol was comforting, forthright, balanced, _warm_.

He shook himself out of these thoughts. _You’re turning soft, Loki._

“I keep telling you to leave me alone,” he said, perhaps a shade more harshly than he had intended.

Other Sol would have given him a mouthful of abuse or stormed off in an eerie echo of his own feelings. This Sol merely grinned at him engagingly. “Yeah, you do. Maybe one of these days you’ll realise that it’s never going to work.”

Stubborn, silly, painfully naive, loyal to the point of aggravation - why, by the Nine, did he put up with her? But he knew why. She was all he had left of what he used to be.

He huffed a small sigh and returned his attention to the stars. After a moment he felt Sol’s presence nearer, and then her voice said right next to his shoulder,

“So are you going to take me on a tour?”

“A tour? Of Asgard? I feel that would invite trouble at the moment, don’t you?”

“Not Asgard - the stars. They’re different to the ones we can see from Earth. Tell me about them … please?”

He smiled despite himself. “They are not my stars, either, Sol. I know less about these ones than you do.”

“I’d forgotten that. You fit in so well here I forgot that it isn’t …” she cut herself off.

The smile he was still wearing twisted itself into a more wry shape. “Sol, the one thing I have never done is fit in well.”

She stepped back, just slightly, enough to give him space without abandoning him. “Are you going back to bed?”

“No. Well, perhaps, in a while. You should go - you will require rest more than I do.”

“Was that a hint of actual care for my welfare?”

“You’re delusional,” he growled, without heat. “I can think of few things more irritating than dragging an exhaustion-weakened mortal around Asgard. You will do both of us a favour if you stop this incessant chattering and go back to sleep.”

Her voice was lightly sarcastic as she bade him goodnight again and went back to her designated chamber. Loki returned to staring at the stars. They were the same, yet not the same at all, and it was unsettling, just like everything else about this reality.

*      *      *      *

_"Father, why does Loki stare at the stars so?"_ _Thor is perplexed, his golden head full of confusion at his little brother’s peculiar disposition to sit in silence and contemplate the universe._

_"Perhaps he is trying to commit the constellations to memory. It wouldn’t be a bad thing for you to do the same, Thor, since your own ability to read the stars is rather less than spectacular."_

_The Allfather, ever the sympathetic parent. The simple truth is that although Loki has in fact memorized more of the stellar positions than anyone else in his contemporary group and can acquit himself well in navigational tests, he does not sit and gaze at the heavens above Asgard for that purpose. At first it had been a way to escape the noise and bother of his companions, for somehow when he looks deep into the silent vaults of the universe he is able to transcend the physical plane and it is almost as though his soul travels among the burning orbs he watches. Now, however, as well as being a defensive retreat, it has grown into something more: as his soul travels, he finds that more and more often he can actually feel the cold winds of heaven drifting across his skin, the heat of the stars as he passes them, the floating weightlessness of the nothingness that lies between them. It is calming to his spirit, and he can pass hours in this manner, unable to see, hear or feel anything that is happening near his body. He is at one with the universe. The petty squabbles of the court, the suspicion and dislike of the others, the pressure of the Allfather’s expectations - none of it matters any longer, and the weightlessness he feels is not merely physical but emotional too._

_"Loki!"_

_The slap to his face is more than even his travelling-powers can withstand. He breathes in sharply and refocuses his eyes on the face in front of him. Sif. He cannot speak just yet, as that part of his soul has not quite returned to his body. As his focus returns, he gradually translates her facial expression. She’s angry. About what, he has no idea, but he has no doubt she will soon explain. He frowns. Something isn’t right about her._

_"Would you like to tell me what you see that is different about me tonight?"_

_He scans her appearance rather desperately, coming up blank until he reaches her head. His eyes widen, and she looks grimly satisfied._

_"Yes, that’s right, my hair."_

_"It’s black!"_ _he blurts out. Sometimes when his speech returns, it leaves tact behind for a little while._

_"It’s hideous! I look like … like …"_ _she splutters, enraged to the point of incoherence._

_"You look like me."_ _But silky black hair is not attractive to Aesir, and Sif’s golden tresses are - were - her pride and joy. She is not generally a vain girl, and prefers climbing trees and sparring with her friends to learning how to dance and embroider, but her hair is her one concession to stereotypical femininity._

_Her eyes narrow in suspicion. "_ _Is that why you did this?"_

_"What?"_ _Sif’s vanity about her hair is irritating to him sometimes, but he wouldn’t dare do anything to it. Sif is well-known as a vicious fighter and her hair, as her crowning glory, would be something she would defend to the death almost as much as her honour._

_"You did this! You wanted me to suffer because I poked fun at your hair last week!"_

_He shakes his head. "_ _Sif, I didn’t do it. I don’t know anything about it."_

_But she will not be shaken from her belief. "Change it back. I get it, I’ve learnt the lesson, I hate having black hair and I won’t make fun of yours anymore. Now change. it. back."_

_He sighs. There is no point in trying to argue with her - when she gets an idea into her head she is as stubborn as Thor. He flexes his hands, feeling the seiðr rising and flowing through his veins. "_ _Hold still,"_ _he commands, and casts a Reversal._

_Seconds later, he picks himself up from the ground and looks about him for Sif. She is struggling upright, her hair ruffled and standing on end as if she has been struck by lightning - and still jetblack. She stands up and dusts herself down before pulling a thick lock over her shoulder and snarling at it._

_"You’ve had your fun, now change it back, lying witch!"_

_He is beginning to feel angry now. Always the scapegoat for their stupidity, now his long-suffering acceptance of his role as the villain seems to have backfired. He does not like how quickly any and every unexplained misfortune is laid at his door. "_ _I’ve done what I can for you. It didn’t work. You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want it changed back."_

_Her blade is at his throat before he can take another step, and he rolls his eyes at her. "_ _Oh really, you’re going to slit my throat if I don’t meet your cosmetic demands? I’m not a damned hairdresser."_

_:You cast your horrid little spell on my hair - a part of me - which I view as a violation, so unless you want the whole of Asgard to hear that you tried to force yourself on me and turned my hair black out of spite when I refused you … you’ll change it back."_

_He curls his lip at her, taking refuge in his hollow shell of sarcasm. "_ _Oh please. You’re not my type, Sif. I prefer my women less argumentative. Also, I like brunettes, so I’d hardly turn your hair black as punishment. I’m not quite that much of a masochist."_

_Some of this is true. Generally he does prefer brunettes, but Sif has always been a notable exception, ever since she tumbled into the lives of the two princes of Asgard so many years ago when they were all children. It is an admission that could not be dragged from him by the Norns, the Valkyries, or the Allfather himself, but he admires her spirit and determination, and moreover finds her physically very attractive. Even more so now that her hair is, inexplicably, the colour of Odin’s ravens._

_She glares at him in a way suggestive of brutal death and savage tortures, but removes her blade. "_ _You are right. No-one would ever believe that you would try to force anything upon me. I would not have left you alive."_

_Somehow, this doesn’t comfort him._

_It is not until years later that he discovers the true culprit of the prank, but by then it is much too late, and Sif has grown used to her black hair. She has never forgiven him, though - but it would do no good to explain what really happened, as she would only assume him to be lying. Earning a reputation as the trickster has its pros, but it also has its cons. Even when you tell the truth they do not believe you._


	16. Death, You Bring Death and Destruction to All That You Touch

 

_ His soul burns within him, the blue clutch of the Tesseract swirling a mesh of tendrils through his mind, seething with a thousand insistent whispers, calling to him of destiny and power, grasping the edges of his fragile sanity and darkening his horizons until all he can see is the path mapped out for him by Them.  _

_ He sits in a glass cage, fashioned for a beast with more brute strength than he possesses, yet still he smiles.  _

_ The mortals come to him, one by one, all saying the same thing with different words. " _ _Give in. This will not end well for you. Surrender and save what remains of your dignity."_ ****

_ He scorns them all, biting back with the most unsettling, enigmatic, demoralizing words he can gather. _

_ They leave him to himself eventually, with a threat he takes exactly as seriously as it deserves and no more.  _

_ He bides his time. For all his bluster, for all his intemperate demanding arrogance, for all his controlled violence and eloquent speeches, deep down he is uncomfortably aware that he is merely another pawn in this game being played by a force that makes him seem small and weak by comparison. It is not for him to act now. He waits for the plan to fall into place, and broods over his wrongs. It seems to be his fate always to be used by someone even more powerful and more heartless than he. But this time, this time it will be different. This time he will win Their battle for them, and then he will at last be respected, honoured, recognized as a great leader in his own right. No longer in the shadow of his idiot golden false brother, no longer the abandoned monster dragged from the rock, he will take charge of this fragmented, wretched world and usher it into a bright new era. Once he has destroyed all traitors - starting with the 'lost creatures' that attempt to thwart him now - the pathetic, foolish little beings that inhabit this realm will happily do his bidding, and under his rule they will no doubt prosper. He drifts off into a beatific dream of his glorious future, although underneath the glittering lustre of the dream his charred heart knows no such future can exist for him. Dreaming, pretending, conjuring visions of a bright future - this is his way of escaping the ice of his past and the flat, stony surface of reality. _

_ They send her at last, but not in the way he was expecting. He mocks her sentimental attachment to the 'hawk' presently under his control.  _

_"Is this love, Agent Romanoff?"_ _ he taunts.  _

_ She responds bravely, proudly even, but he thinks he can see the crack in her shield. He slides the intimidation up a notch at a time until he is spitting harsh, acidic insults at her, his fist pounding into the glass. She breaks. He gains a twisted, desperate satisfaction from her silly tears, and cannot resist a figurative crow of triumph, even as something in his mind kicks at him for having fallen low enough to need this type of sadistic gratification.  _

_ And then she drops what he realizes was a mask almost worthy of him, and walks away, leaving him in turmoil. How could he have been taken in by her? He had seriously underestimated the woman, his guard lowered by her apparent softness, her red-headed Midgardian beauty, and her clever play. He is losing his touch, and this enrages him.  _

_"Love is for children,"_ _ she said. It is true - but he had thought to play on her sentiment, only to find that she harbours even less than he does. It is disturbing to find someone colder than himself, and in the form of such a weak creature!  _

_ From now he must be more alert. He will not allow them to outwit him a second time. He is Loki, of Asgard, and they are all beneath him.  _

_ But the tiny doubt sown by the encounter eats away at what is left his ego, and his defeat comes as no surprise at all. It was over from the moment he started to lose his footing - no, no point in pretending any more. It was over before it even began, a hollow dream that dissolved in the air like a golden soap-bubble when reality intervened. For really, what could a monster ever hope to bring to the Nine Realms but failure, and death, and destruction? _

 

*   *   *   * 

 

 

Frigga took a long look at the stranger who claimed to be her son. He was unaware of her presence, leaning on the balcony and looking out at the stars. His body appeared relaxed as he rested his elbows on the stone parapet, but there was an underlying tension in his muscles, like a cat about to pounce - or run away. Despite his evident wonder and emotion at being here, she had noticed his constant wariness and the uneasy glint in his eyes, the way he sometimes flinched from physical contact even with Sol, whom he apparently knew and trusted as much as he trusted anyone, the way he sat curled in on himself when he thought nobody was watching. How could she have raised this damaged creature? Was her alter ego in the other realm so different to herself? Had she been guilty of some kind of cruelty? Surely not. He seemed genuinely happy to see her in this cosmos, if somewhat overwhelmed. A horrible thought struck her. Was the _Thor_ in the other realm as broken as this boy? What had the Other Frigga done to her precious children? Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away angrily. Crying would achieve nothing. As much as she wanted to embrace the man who was almost her son and tell him that everything would be well, she knew it wouldn’t be. Not once Thor found out that a Jotun had infiltrated the court of Asgard.

As if her thoughts were loud enough to have finally broken through his abstraction, he spoke without turning around.

“Mother?” Then, recalling himself, “I mean, Lady Frigga, of course.”

“Loki.” She moved from her position behind one of the pillars and approached him. “It is a beautiful night, is it not?”

He folded his hands. “It is. I’ve not seen a night like this in a long time.”

“Does your Asgard not enjoy our clement weather?”

He turned to her, almost surprised, and let out a hard, bitter laugh. “The time for clement weather is long past in that realm. It’s hard to enjoy the sunshine when the sky is obscured by smoke and ash.”

Frigga felt her jaw drop a little. It was impossible not to feel shock at this revelation. She found it hard to imagine any cosmos with a destroyed Asgard. “It is as bad as that?”

His face blanked - an expression she had seen on the faces of many Einherjar over the millennia. It was the way they cut themselves off from their experiences in battle. She did not like to see it on his face. “Forget I said anything. I am not to be trusted as any kind of reliable source.”

Frigga bit back a protest, merely looking away from him and back out at the stars. She did not understand how he had come to be this way. She understood very little, in fact, of the entire situation, and that made her feel distinctly uncomfortable. “Why do you say that?” she asked him gently. “Why are you not to be trusted?”

His eyes took on a hunted expression even as his mouth curved upward in a thin, mocking smile. “Oh, Lady Frigga, surely you can’t expect any good to come of my telling you things about the Other Asgard? What _would_ the Time Keepers say?”

Frigga stared at him for a moment before bursting into laughter. “Your _being_ here would fairly stop their hearts from beating. I hardly think a little information sharing could make things much worse.”

“You have no idea.”

She tried to take his hand, but he flinched away from her with a deep frown. “No good can come of it, you hear me?”

The silence was razor-edged until she finally nodded. “Very well. I have neither the desire nor the ability to force any information from you.”

He gave a dry laugh, brittle like the fire-gold leaves of an Alfheim autumn just before they fade to ash and fall from the skeletons of the trees. If you could, by some tangible magic, touch that laugh, it would snap and shatter and drive its myriad sharp points into your hand until you bled. “The irony is that once upon a time that was true. Now, you could push me to more indiscretion than even I would once have considered possible. But you won’t. You are good and kind, something I will never be again, and you know your duty to your world … and to your son. You’d not really be willing to endanger your Asgard by pressing me for information that could cause its destruction.”

“ _Destruction_? I asked you why you have such a bitter and jaded view of yourself, that is all. I fail to see -”

He cut her off, his eyes hard emeralds. “Yes, that is exactly the problem with this entire family - whether of this cosmos or the other. We all _fail to see_ things that should be painfully obvious, and the rest of the universe howls with laughter at our blindness, we who should be the greatest among the realms! We hurt ourselves and each other by refusing to see what is in front of us, and in the end it turns around and destroys us. I should never have come here. It was a mistake born of weakness on my part.”

“Affection is not weakness, Loki.”

He mocked her with his smile. “Oh, is it not? Next you’ll tell me that mercy is a strength too.”

Impulsively she reached out to touch his face softly, but he recoiled with a savage glare.

“What happened to you? I cannot fathom why a child of mine would have ended up this way.”

“Then it’s just as well for your own peace of mind that the one thing I have never been is a child of _yours_ ,” he bit out, and left her abruptly.

She watched him stalk away with a claw of pain wrapping itself around her heart. _I must save him_ , she thought, _but how can I, when his very existence may turn out to be possibly the worst danger my realm has ever known?_

 

Loki was in a vicious mood by the time Sol woke up. He greeted her from between his teeth, the words quiet and hard. She noticed the tension in his jaw and sighed.

“What’s happened?”

He glared. “What do you mean?”

He was at his worst, aristocratic and inflexibly superior, and Sol’s spine felt as though someone was sticking ice-picks in it.

“ _Something’s_ obviously wrong, and I can only imagine that you were talking to somebody while I was asleep. That or you had the worst nightmare yet.”

“I don’t see what business it is of yours or why you constantly feel the need to irritate me with your inane suppositions about my state of mind.”

The ice-picks dug further, hammered in by his attitude. “Ok, you know what? I’ve had enough of you treating me like a child. I’m aware that you’re very old, which might explain your horrible behaviour, but I’m not stupid and if you are going to carry on like this forever I think maybe I should just give up trying to help you. You clearly don’t appreciate me or anything I do, and you’re too fucking proud to admit you need me, so I’m done. I’m going home, and you can do whatever the hell you want to do, as long as it doesn’t involve me.”

“I think you’re forgetting something very important, Solrun,” he said in his silkiest voice.

She folded her arms. “And what would that be?”

“As tired of my company as you evidently are, I’m afraid going home will be impossible for you without me.”

“I’m not _tired of your company_ , Loki - I’m _tired_ of you always behaving as if you are the only person in the whole universe who knows anything about anything, and I’m _pissed off_.”

“Need I remind you that against my express instructions you followed me through my carefully plotted pathway, thereby distributing the power further than it was meant to be stretched and sending me _wildly_ off course? _You_ don’t have any right to be angry with _me_.”

Sol gasped. “You mean …”

“Yes! You decided that I couldn’t possibly manage by myself, because I have only been travelling the realms for over a millennium, which is nothing to a child such as yourself, of course - you who had never even set foot off your mundane and insignificant little world until you stepped through my portal. So you decided to rescue me from myself, and you twisted my magic into trying to accommodate two bodies instead of the one it was designed to fit. Even the hopelessly inadequate and short-sighted scientists of Midgard would be able to tell you that two bodies cannot occupy the same space simultaneously. My magic did the best it could under the circumstances, which landed us both _here_.”

“Loki, I’m a biologist. My father was both a biologist and an experimental physicist. I took up only the biology side of his work. I have a basic understanding of physics and almost none at all of quantum theory.”

His eyes were the coldest she’d ever seen them. “And you think your ignorance should absolve you, I suppose?”

He held her gaze with stony persistence until she finally lowered her eyes to the ground. “No. That excuse has never worked for anyone. I’m sorry, Loki.”

“That may well be, but your apologies don’t resolve the matter.”

The irritation rose again into her chest. “What do you want from me, Loki? Do you want me to grovel? Do you want me to promise never to interfere in your life again? To leave? What?”

Suddenly he had the oddest look in his eyes. “It’s far too late for that.”

To her chagrin she felt her eyes stinging harshly, the harbinger of scalding, humiliating tears. “I know I’ve ruined everything. You’ve made that abundantly clear. I can’t help the past, I can only try better in the future. I’ll go … somewhere … I’ll let you get on with your big plans and stop messing your life up.”

“And where will you go? You can’t blunder into my plans and then expect me to cut you adrift in the middle of Asgard. You’ve known nothing but Midgard. You are my responsibility and I’ll not abandon you, but you have to understand the consequences of your meddling in things you do not understand.”

“I’m only your responsibility because Thor made you promise to look after me. You can go, I won’t hold it against you.”

His mouth tightened. He said, cryptically, “Thor has never been able to _make_ me do anything,” and turned away from her.

“Loki!”

He did not turn around, but his back twitched slightly, like the ripple of fur down the spine of a peevish cat. “What?”

“What are we going to do?”

That made him turn back to her. His brow was still furrowed in displeasure, and she felt more and more like a naughty child. She didn’t like it at all, and wondered why it was so easy for him to make her feel this way.

“ _We_ aren’t going to do anything. _You_ are going to stay with Thor and Frigga while _I_ work on a way of getting us back to Midgard. I can’t trust you not to mess things up further.”

“It’s not like I’m deliberately throwing a spanner in the works!” she protested.

His face suddenly looked tired. “Sol, I of all people understand that just because you don’t intend to find trouble doesn’t mean that trouble won’t find _you_.”

The sense of injustice faded, replaced by a crushing emotion that she identified as realizing she’d disappointed him.

“You’re as bad as my dad,” she blurted out, not even trying to stop the tears from falling this time.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, and then shook himself as if covered in a deluge of cold water, and marched off out of her sight.

She didn’t bother following him. Fighting with Loki was exhausting in a way she couldn’t quantify, and she’d had more than enough of it so far today.

 

“I spoke with him,” said Frigga.

Sol turned, surprised. She hadn’t heard the King’s Mother approaching. “With Loki?”

Frigga nodded slowly. “That is why he snaps at you. I seem to have the ability to bring out the worst in him.”

Sol instinctively reached for the older woman’s hand, heedless of convention or etiquette. “Don’t say that! He - he loves you, and feels awful guilt for ... something that happened. You don’t bring out the worst in him exactly - it’s more that seeing you reminds him of when he was _at_ his worst. Does that even make any sense?”

Frigga looked down at the hand that gripped hers tightly, and a faint, soft smile played at the corners of her mouth. “You are more of a gift to us than you know, Sol. Especially to him. You are his salvation.”

Sol stared. “ _What_?”

“You really don’t know who you are, do you?”

There was the strangest sensation creeping through Sol’s body, like a chilly mist or the thrill of an electric storm. “What do you mean, _who I am_? I’m Solrun Brandvold, daughter of Espen Brandvold, scientist.”

Frigga seemed to be about to say more, but two large Einherjar (they always seemed to go everywhere in twos, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee) appeared through the big door, looking as perturbed as it is possible for a pair of living Olympian statues to look.

“Your Highness!” said Tweedledum. “A … _situation_ has arisen.”

“Heimdall sent us a message,” continued Tweedledee with almost no pause. “There is a threat.”

The King’s Mother turned pale. “It is happening. It’s _now._ ”

 

 


	17. I'll Show You Ruin, I'll Show You Evil, I'll Sing You a War Song

 

_Trust is a delicate thing. Like bone, it is capable of enduring immense stress and lasting for centuries, but if you twist it, bend it, move it the wrong way, it shatters._

_Loki has always trusted his father. Everyone else does so unquestioningly, and for years Loki has quieted the small, feeble voices in his mind that would ask the wrong questions and earn him disfavour. Not that he ever seems to need help earning disfavour - but he_ **_wants_ ** _so much to be loved and approved as Thor is._

_He finds … something … on one of his backroad trips through the alleys of spacetime that connect the Nine. Ironwood, the dark forest home of people despised by Asgard. A tall, commanding woman who looks at him like maybe he isn’t a disappointment. His knowledge of seiðr does not make her distrust him - it seems to impress her, and then to attract her. Their coming together is brief but filled with something that could be wild desperation or possibly a kind of hope._

_They both understand that nothing can come of their relationship. He is a prince of Asgard and she a wood-witch whose home is beneath the roots of a great stand of aspen._

_But a year later she arrives on the steps of the Golden City, holding a small bundle that wriggles and squeals, and asks to see the father. The child’s father, not the Allfather, but Odin intercepts her anyway, and after speaking with her, leaves her waiting in a side-chamber while he goes to confront Loki._

_“Angrboða Járnvida? You carelessly gave yourself to a_ **_wood-witch_ ** _?” Nothing Loki has ever done before has been enough to drive Odin to this level of fury. “You foolish, thoughtless boy! Do you understand what you’ve done? This woman is not your kind. The child will be …” He cuts himself off, but Loki understands only too well. Odin may still have one eye, but he has always been blind. His prejudice against anyone not of ‘his kind’ shows daily, and Loki has noticed it quietly for years, always too afraid, too doubtful of his own understanding to say anything. No longer._

_“Your prejudice makes you hard-hearted, Father. Why should I not love whomever I choose?”_

_“Love? You think this is love? You abandoned her for a year!”_

_“I was going to visit her. I had no idea she was having a child.”_

_“_ **_Your_ ** _child. Your responsibility, which you ignored and shirked.”_

_“Because I did not know!”_

_Odin has had enough of his younger son. He stands up with a displeased sigh. “Since you refuse to take responsibility for that which is yours, I will have to do it for you.”_

_He leaves the room, but Loki follows him at a distance, a nameless dread beginning to take root in the pit of his stomach. He has never seen his father look quite like this - anger and disappointment he knows, but this … rage and sadness,_ **_bitterness_ ** _and dark, dark fear burrowing under the Allfather’s skin … this is new._

_He hides behind a pillar in the throne room while Odin sits down and calls Angrboða to his presence._

_He watches her with the little one, and his heart feels warm. He almost forgets his dread. She makes a good mother, this tall witch of Ironwood. The tiny creature waves its arms around and hits her in the chin with a minuscule fist, and she croons quietly to soothe the babe._

_Odin is unmoved. In fact Loki sees disgust on the noble face of his father, and is filled with a rage of his own - the rage of a new father at seeing someone disparage his child. He has not even met the baby, did not even know of its existence until half an hour ago, but already it has wormed its way into his affection with a speed and strength that shocks the Trickster of Asgard. He wants to take the little thing in his arms and rock it to sleep, to protect it and whisper soft words with his silver tongue, shower it in warmth and light, make it the centre of his world and teach it the ways of seiðr, and watch it grow and become strong and quick and clever and_ **_happy_ ** _._

_This revelatory reverie is crushed almost before it begins, however - Odin has made a decision, based on prejudice, based on fear and paranoia._

_“You are banished from this realm,” he proclaims, holding Gungnir out like a sword at her throat._

_Loki feels a wrenching pain, but it is nothing to what he feels next, for Odin has not finished._

_“And your … offspring … will be sent to the realm of Helheim, where it will spend eternity as the guardian of the dead.”_

**_WHAT?_ **

_Loki leaps out from behind the pillar, heedless of any censure or judgement that may come his way. “Stop!”_

_Odin glares at him. “Go. Have you not done damage enough, without also interfering in my decrees?”_

_“This is my child,” says Loki, standing proud as befits a father. “I will not allow you to consign it to the depths of Helheim just because you are displeased with me. Banish_ **_me_ ** _. Send me to Helheim. I don’t care. Just … not this. Please.”_

_Odin rises to his feet in kingly wrath. He is at his most terrifying._

_“_ **_You_ ** _will not_ **_allow_ ** _this? You? You are not the king, Loki. It is my will that this child be sent away, my decision when and where that is done, and my word that stands as the foundation of Asgard and the Nine Realms. It is my duty to sort out the mess that comes of your irresponsibility and foolishness, my burden to bear the consequences of your false steps, and my obligation to ensure the continued safety of my kingdom. Do not question me again, boy!”_

_Odin’s word is law. Loki, the second son, can do nothing. Frigga tries to reason with her husband, but he is adamant, and nothing in the universe can change the Allfather’s mind once he has decided on a course of action that he considers wise._

_The baby is torn, shrieking, from the arms of the distraught wood-witch, and borne away by grim-faced Einherjar to be sent to the desolate chill of Helheim._

_Angrboða, the tall, the striking, the glorious, lies in weeping fury on the floor of the throne room. Her hatred is evident when she looks at Odin as the guards remove her and cast her out, but it is also there in her eyes as she looks at Loki for the last time - the witch-boy she might have loved once upon a time, she now loathes with equal passion._

_For the first time Loki knows what true heartbreak feels like, and he determines in that moment never to trust Odin again._

 

_*     *     *     *_

 

The fear in Frigga’s voice scared Sol. Something that could make such a majestic and strong woman blanch like that must be something too terrible to comprehend.

“What do I do?”

Frigga shook her head, closing her eyes as a tear rolled down her cheek. “There is nothing to be done now. It is happening, and there is not a thing that can stop it. We were such fools to think that anything we did would prevent prophecy from being fulfilled! What is written must occur as surely as the spheres spin, and not the strongest king can make a difference in the unfolding of the _wyrd_ that amounts to more than a single speck of dust.”

Sol gritted her teeth, protesting against this fatalism. “There _must_ be something. You’re Frigga! I can’t believe you’d just sit here and let whatever it is happen without fighting it!”

Her eyes were sad. “My child, we all fought against it years ago. We did terrible things to save ourselves from the certainty of destruction. But you will learn that there are some inevitabilities in the universe that can never be changed or stopped no matter how hard you fight. All we did was delay this for a while. The end of all things is still destined to overtake us.”

They followed the Einherjar back to the throne room, where Thor was already sitting on the great throne, his frown heavier and more terrifying than the hammer at his side. He spoke as they entered, and his voice was rough and dark with anxiety hidden behind a thin veneer of courage that was beginning to crack like old wood varnish. “If the end of all things is to come, the least I can do is meet it as a king, strong and proud and defiant. If it’s war Ragnarok wants, then war I’ll give it. If it’s blood, I shall rain blood and storms upon it until it’s satisfied.”

The massive doors at the end of the hall opened, and in strode a man. Just one man, yet so tall that somehow the hall seemed less imposing for his being in it. The Einherjar - posted two by two, one on either side of each pillar - stood ready with their spears, but Thor gave them no command. The man drew closer, fairly marching up the long hall with a confident, feral stride, and Sol saw that he was dressed in fur skins, with the head of a huge white wolf as a sort of helmet.

He was close enough now that she could see the wild red glint in his green-blue eyes, and the sharpness of the canines he bared in greeting, almost like fangs.

“So, this is the Golden City everyone raves about.” His voice was startlingly smooth and rich. Sol didn’t know what she had been expecting - some kind of unearthly hissing rasp, perhaps, or a great booming rough growl of a voice - but it certainly wasn’t this melted-75%-chocolate in aural form. With a jolt she realized he sounded uncannily similar to Loki.

Thor inclined his head, a small, regal motion designed to put this wolf-giant in his place.

It didn’t work. He cracked a spooky kind of grin, and said, “Oh, I see. The king has no words for a lowly beast such as myself. The _King of Asgard_ has far better things to do with his time, of course! I’m sorry, your Majesty, for intruding on your scintillating schedule. I wouldn’t have come at all, except … well, you have a visitor I’m _very_ interested in seeing.”

Thor, aptly, looked thunderous. “Our visitors are no concern of yours.”

He cocked his head on one side. “Oh, but they are when they include Loki of Jotunheim. I have a few things I’d like to say to him, you see. I’ve been waiting a very long time to meet him.”

Thor started to rise from the throne, saying angrily, “I knew I should have killed him the moment he set foot in this realm!”, but Frigga put her hand on his arm.

“We may not have asked him to come, but he is under our protection now, Thor. Our _guest._ ”

The king shook his mother’s hand off with an irritated shrug. “Mother, he is the cause of this! _Jotunheim,_ by all the Norns!” Then, turning on her in quick suspicion. “Did you _know_ of this?”

She cast her eyes to the floor. “I guessed, Thor. Yes, I knew.”

The King of Asgard didn’t seem to be able to formulate words. Whipping back around to face the grinning wolf-man, he snarled, “You may take that frost-giant away and do whatever you will with him. And be damned to both of you!”

Frigga gasped, “ _No,_ Thor!” but her son was as stubborn as his father, and shook his golden head decisively.

“If it will prevent the end of all things, I’d gladly give him _twenty_ misbegotten frost-mongrels.”

“ _Misbegotten frost-mongrels_ don’t seem to rate highly in your mind, your Majesty.” There was more than a hint of steel in the chocolate voice now.

Thor’s eyes narrowed. “What do you-”

“Did I hear my name being taken in vain?”

Sol’s last hope, that Loki would stay out of the way, died in a flash of green and gold as the Trickster Prince appeared in the middle of the hallway behind the wolf-giant.

He looked magnificent. He was dressed in Aesir clothes, dark green and black leather with gold highlights and golden bracers, with a long cloak sweeping behind him, the colour of an oak tree at the end of spring. Sol felt herself choke up. She was so _proud_ of him, but at the same time angry enough to want to strangle him for being so melodramatic and making this theatrical entrance right in the middle of something so dangerous.

The wolf-giant turned, slowly, with a vicious smile like a predator that has seen its quarry backed into a corner.

“Here I am,” said Loki of Jotunheim, of Asgard, of the Nine Realms. “What do you want with me?”

The wolf-man paused, apparently savouring the moment, before his eyes turned poison-red and glowed with hate. His voice dropped at least an octave, and was closer to the rasping growl Sol had expected to begin with.

“I want you to watch as I take everything away from you, and then - _then_ , I want you to die.”


	18. Sorrowful Yet Glorious Somehow

 

Loki’s eyes narrowed. There was something oddly familiar about this wolf-giant.  _ Who in the Nine is he? _ But the silent question could not be asked, not yet. He drew himself up, revelling for a split second in his own glorious adaptability. At first he had been unable to draw power from this Asgard - the magic had a different signature, a  _ wrongness _ , an infinitesimal shift away from the reality he had known and in which his  _ rún  _ had been birthed and his  _ seiðr _ learned. But then, wonderfully, his body had begun to attune itself to the off-kilter hum of this Other Asgard, even in the short time that they had been visiting. It was by no means a complete transition as yet; he was feeling the effort of maintaining this glamour (a small vanity he allowed himself) when normally it cost him no more than did breathing or blinking, but the effort was manageable, and he felt a thrill of pride in his abilities. 

It was short-lived. 

The wolf-giant turned slowly to face him and uttered the words that should strike terror into anyone’s heart: “I want you to die.” But for Loki, death was the least of his worries. The part that scared him most was the part that immediately preceded it, because  _ there _ the wolf-giant had a chance to inflict lasting damage. 

He chose to try his usual first tactic - laugh in the face of danger. His smile was serpentine and almost false enough to be real.

“Oh, please. I’m known for my unfortunate way of caring about nothing but myself, so I doubt there’s much you could take from me. Except my pride, and that’s  _ quite _ fiercely defended, so I suggest you save yourself the trouble and go home. Wherever ‘home’ is. A ditch, by the smell of you.” He wrinkled his nose with just the right amount of drama. 

The wolf-giant bared his teeth in a way that suggested both appreciation of a joke and also tearing people’s throats out. “You always smell like roses after a wild and long journey,  _ Prince? _ ” 

Loki looked down his nose at the man - no mean feat, considering their respective heights - and raised a single, scathing eyebrow. “Not  _ roses _ , no. But certainly not …” he made a show of sniffing, like a wine-taster, before continuing decisively and with palpable disdain, “ _ Certainly  _ not  _ rotting fish _ .” He added a small shudder for effect. 

The wolf-giant chuckled, but it was an unpleasant kind of laugh, the sort that makes you think of nails on a chalkboard or watching everyone you love be disemboweled. “You think that you can bait me so easily? You’re out of practice, old man.”

Out of the corner of his eye Loki saw Sol’s expression. She looked angry and exasperated and scared, and he hated that she was scared. “I may be out of practice, but the rustiest old  _ galdramaðr  _ still has the benefit of a thousand more years of experience than a child such as yourself. Go home to your mother, brat, before I decide to turn you into something unspeakable.” 

The wolf-giant’s eyes were fairly burning with a hot, crimson fury now; Loki realized with a sense of mixed annoyance and sympathy that his jab about mothers might have been ill-advised. “I would gladly go home to her, Loki of Jotunheim, if she were still alive. But due to  _ your  _ cowardice and fecklessness she ended her days poverty-stricken and withered in a foreign Ironwood that was not her own. It was your doing -  _ Father _ .” 

The silence that followed this revelation was electric, tense like the break between lightning and thunder while the whole world waits for the crack of doom to come roaring in on its unprotected head. 

It all made sense now. The echo of familiarity that Loki had felt on seeing this proud, wild wolf-giant, the strange sense of having known him, somehow, in another time, another life, and most of all the titanic grudge the stranger bore toward him. 

“ _ Angrboða …”  _ The name was soft and halting on his lips, a whisper of a past so distant it was barely more than a fantasy now. “There was another child?”

The wolf-giant made an awkward, mocking bow. “There was. My sister was taken Norns know where, but my mother took me through the veil to be safe in this universe. It was home, but it was not home - not for her. No-one knew her here. Life was a struggle, and I learned how to be strong, how to fight and win, how to kill for every scrap we owned.”

A lump had manifested in Loki’s throat, painful, inexplicable. A son he had never been given the chance to know now stood before him full of hate and demanded his life from him. It was the perfect ironic mirror for his own story: fathers and sons, disappointment, resentment and loathing, completing a full, poetic circle in this other reality. The Norns have a strange way of weaving at times, and occasionally their sense of humour comes across as being rather vindictive. 

“I am Fenrir, the Wolf of Ironwood,” proclaimed Loki’s son to the stunned-silent occupants of the great hall, “and I’m here to take what I am owed - vengeance for my mother, and for the life I should have had.” 

“There are things all of us  _ should have had _ ,” said Loki, trying not to sound as sympathetic as he felt, “but killing people rarely gets us any of them. Take it from someone who knows.”

“You killed someone?” The scorn on Fenrir’s face was now mixed with something like grudging admiration. “Who was it? One of your twenty thousand servants?”

“My biological father,” replied Loki, looking his son directly in the eyes. It was disturbingly like looking in a mirror, if a mirror could show you what you might have once been. 

“You wanted revenge?”

“I did. I also wanted to prove myself. It was a complicated time in my life - not that my life is ever exactly simple.”

Fenrir snarled. “You at least had the benefit of a rich family.”

_ Who lied constantly, and hid my identity from me until I discovered it by accident…  _  “Wealth isn’t everything,” said Loki, and the flat triteness of it in the open air made him wince. 

“Only a person who never had to wonder where his next meal was coming from could say such a thing.” 

“It’s true that I have not been through the same things you have had to deal with. But it would be a mistake to imagine that I’ve never had a day’s trouble in my life. You have no idea what  _ I _ have had to deal with, either.” 

The sneer was a feral copy of his own. “Your hardhearted adoptive father, you mean? Or your spoiled brat of a brother? Forgive me if I can’t summon a lot of pity for your plight, Prince.” 

“It’s true I wasn’t always as brave as I should have been, especially when I was young. I will carry the regret for what happened to you and your mother and sister to my grave.” 

“That you will,” growled Loki’s son, and shrugged off the topmost wolfskin to reveal craggy shoulders and massive arms - and a pair of long, wicked bone knives with serrated edges. “But you won’t have a long time to nurse that regret. Just long enough to see your family die before I slit your throat.” 

“Your grudge is with me, Fenrir,” said Loki, a sheet of stone-cold calm rammed down tightly over his growing panic. “There is no need to involve anyone else here. Besides, they’re not even my family.” Norns, it hurt so much to say that, but it had to be done. “You must know I am not from this universe. These people aren’t even related to me! I don’t exist here.” 

Fenrir was running the tip of his tongue across his fangs. “You don’t exist  _ anymore _ . You lived long enough to run around on Midgard for a while and then return to assassinate your father and claim the throne of Jotunheim before you and Odin slaughtered each other at the Battle of Ísfjall.”

A gasp that sounded like a moan came from behind Fenrir - Loki’s heart twisted.  _ Frigga _ . 

“Anyway, it matters very little whether you’re actually related to any of them. What matters to me is how you  _ feel _ about them - and you are quite attached enough for it to be very painful when I force you to watch me cut out their hearts.” 

Loki cracked a savage grin that stung him to his very core, and hissed, “ _ Then go ahead, because I don’t give a single solitary fuck about any of them _ .” 

Fenrir actually laughed. “You know, you’re more fun than I expected. My mother told me you were known for lying, and you live up to your reputation! I might almost believe you, except that I see how you keep looking at the little Midgardian. What’s she to you, huh?”

Loki held his tongue, silently promising himself never to let Fenrir know that particular piece of information. It would be the shortcut to seeing Sol murdered first and with absolutely no compunction. 

“I suppose the Liesmith has to keep some things to himself,” mocked the wolf-giant. “Well, I’ll spare everyone here the annoyance of more conversation. Who wants to go first?” 

“Kill me.” The words were out before he could stop them. 

Fenrir raised an eyebrow. “No, I thought you understood how this works. Killing you first won’t be nearly so interesting.” 

He turned to look at the assembled family-who-were-not-family, standing proud yet afraid, and smirked gleefully. “Oh just  _ look _ at you all. God of Thunder, King of Asgard? So eager to throw his new guest to the wolves. Or what about the King’s Mother? So beautiful, so kind, so  _ helpless _ to thwart her son’s wishes. And then we have the little mortal. Sweet innocent creature with such murderous eyes! Norns, such fire! You’d like to hack me up into tiny pieces - wouldn’t you, pet? - and feed me to the ravens. I see that he cares about you … he cares about all of you. But you, little one, you especially. I know the look in your eyes -  _ I know who you are _ . And that’s why you’re the one I pick to go first.” 

Thor moved his hand to signal to the Einherjar, but Fenrir knocked them out with a fluidly arcane gesture that sent a sharp, electric burst of energy right into their faces. 

“Oh, didn’t I tell you, Father?” he said, spinning back around with a manic grin. “Mother taught me the ways of  _ seiðr _ . She thought it would be good for me to have more in my arsenal than my fists and my teeth and my knives.” 

He turned back to the throne and moved slowly toward Sol with the measured tread of the predator that has his prey cornered with no possible way of escape. 

“I’ve never seen a Midgardian heart,” he mused, stroking one of his knives with the calloused pad of his huge thumb. “This should be enlightening.” 

“I don’t care what you do,” said Sol between gritted teeth. “You won’t get the satisfaction of hearing me make a single sound apart from spitting in your face.” 

“She’s got spirit,” said Fenrir approvingly. “The thing is, though, pet, I don’t need you to scream. I’ll be able to hear his soul screaming from across the hall, and that’s all I want.” 

Sol spat at him. He chuckled and wiped the side of his face. 

Loki took a deep breath. The outcome of the next split second depended entirely on his being able to control and channel the slightly unruly magic of this foreign universe and getting it  _ exactly right _ . 

Everything happened very fast. 

Fenrir lunged toward Sol with his knife. Sol was suddenly shoved out of the way and the knife buried itself in Loki’s chest instead. The echo of himself that was still standing behind Fenrir flickered and disappeared. Fenrir let out a growl of rage, and then was swept sideways into a marble pillar as Sol, screaming in ferocious, broken fury, stretched out her hands and  _ pushed _ … the air, energy,  something … at him. His head met the hard marble with a sickening crack, and he lay still and crumpled on the floor. 

Loki fell to his knees. 

“Sol,” he whispered.

She ran to him. “Loki? Loki, you’re alright, you’re ok, you have to be ok. You’re ok - look at me, damn it! You’re going to be fine, you hear me?”

He smiled. “I didn’t …” 

Her mouth was full of salt water. “What?” 

But he wasn’t finishing the sentence and now everyone’s arms were pulling her away from him and it was so cold all of a sudden and why was he not talking or smiling or moving or breathing? 

And somewhere, the universe heaved a short sigh and sat back to look at the hole that was being ripped through its fabric as the silken threads of the tapestry started to unravel in a wild and confusing riot of tangled colour. 


	19. And If I Do Not Make It Back Again, Please Know That I Have Loved You ‘Til the End

 

_“Life and death are all one,” intones the elderly vǫlva, her voice creaking like an old, ill-kept door, “and one is merely the natural continuation of the other. The universe runs in cycles, and life is no different. One should not think of death as an end - rather, as a beginning, or a perpetuation.”_

_Loki is listening to her intently, while Thor wanders off to examine the swords at the other end of the room. The vǫlva does not call him back or rebuke him, choosing instead to focus her attention on Loki, the more apt of her pupils. She frowns heavily, and for a moment he wonders if she is going to fall into an apoplexy._

_“There is something in your future, child,” she says, then adds after an impressive silence, “... and your life is all out of order - I cannot see it clearly. You will be reborn more times than most.”_

_Loki feels a tingling shiver spreading across his skin. Her words make no sense, but still carry the mysterious weight of the spá, the vision given to the vǫlur._

_She puts her hand on his forehead, and the tingling intensifies uncomfortably under her gnarled old fingers. She breathes in sharply. “I see in you … the end.”_

_“The end?” His own voice cracks in sudden fear._

_She begins to chant, a low, strange song that sends stabs of confusion and worry into his stomach._

 

 _“_ _Day and night_

_Dark and light_

_Such a tale no man could write_

_Heat and cold_

_Green and gold_

_End of all hath been foretold_

_Laughter, tears_

_Courage, fear_

_Shalt thou sell what thou hold'st dear?_

_Broken heart_

_Torn apart_

_None may know where horrors start_

_Hide thine eyes_

_Cast thy lies_

_Make thyself one more disguise_

_No escape_

_Nought but hate_

_Plunge thy soul to shadow's gape_

_Darkest fires_

_Building higher_

_Bend thee to their cruel desire_

_Born from cold_

_Green and gold_

_Ragnarok be thus foretold…”_

 

_He stands like a statue as she dances around in a slow, sedate circle, yet beneath the steady pace of her feet rises the sound of a distant wild drum. His heartbeat._

 

*    *    *    *

 

His heart was not pounding as he would have expected. It was beating only sluggishly, lethargic like a cold, barely-woken snake in the early dawn.

Where was the rush of sensation that followed a thrilling moment? Where was the heart-thundering charge of energy that came with the fast pace of battle?

There was … nothing.

He placed a panicked hand over where his heart should be, and felt no reassuring soft measured thud.

“What is happening to me?”

His mind was fuzzy, fogged and there seemed to be large parts of his memory missing. He looked around, confused. The room he was standing in was unfamiliar and cold. It also seemed … greyer than it should be. There were stone pillars not unlike the ones in the Great Hall, but they were plain and dark instead of marble. There were also huge urns positioned between the pillars, all the way down the room. The strangest thing was that although he could _feel_ the floor beneath his feet, he couldn’t _see_ it when he looked down. It made him feel faintly nauseous.

An old woman, older than the oldest tree, hobbled out from behind one of the pillars and surveyed him with rheumy eyes. “Well, well, well,” she croaked in a tone that probably should have been deep satisfaction but sounded more like tonsillitis.

Loki was having trouble focusing his eyes, so he squinted at her in an attempt at an intimidating frown. “Who are you?”

She wagged an ancient finger at him. “That’s for me to know and for you to wonder about.”

He shook his head as if there was water in his ears. Something wasn’t right. He remembered vague snippets here and there - something about a fight and a wound. Perhaps that was what this was. “Am I dreaming? I’ve heard of strange dreams and experiences when one is close to death.”

The old crone cackled in what may or may not have been genuine mirth; it was impossible to tell. “Close to death? The dance is over, my dear, and you’re so close you’re over the other side.”

“Are you telling me this is _not_ a dream?”

She seemed offended. “This is as real as the knife in your heart, Trickster. Oh, you think I don’t know who you are? Creeping in here all quiet and innocent. Your reputation spreads throughout all the realms, though it must be said they don’t like your name in Valhalla very much.”

The panic set in again. “I can’t die, do you hear me? I can’t be dead. I have to go back. I have to live. I have to finish what I started. Let me go back, damn you!”

She grinned toothlessly. “There’s no going back, _elskan_.”

Another woman appeared, not so wrinkled as the first, and a little taller. She shook her head in apparent despair. “What have I told you about wearing your eye-glasses, Urðr? You’re admitting people without even being able to _see_ them! This boy doesn’t belong here.”

“Of course he does!” argued the older one, her voice rising in a querulous crescendo. “He’s Loki, the Trickster, and if you ask me his appearance here is long overdue.”

“Fortunately nobody is asking you,” said a third woman, smaller than either of the other two, as she appeared unceremoniously in the centre of one of the giant urns and looked down at it in mild disgust. “I really must remember to look where I’m apparating to. This is the fourth time in two days I’ve ended up in this wretched urn.”

“Verðandi is the one who needs eye-glasses, not me,” remarked the one called Urðr, not without a certain malice.

“You know quite well that I’m always like this,” responded Verðandi calmly. “Now, Skuld, what exactly is happening here?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the one who knows that?” Urðr clearly wasn’t finished fighting yet.

The youngest and tallest one held up her hands. “I think we all need to stop talking and listen to what our newest addition has to say,” indicating Loki with a tilt of her head.

Light was beginning to dawn on the newest addition. “You must be the Norns.”

“How clever of you,” said Urðr with acidic sarcasm. “What gave us away, our names or the fact that you’re dead and we are here arguing over your eternal existence?”

Skuld rolled her eyes. “You shouldn’t be mean to the new guests - it makes them uncomfortable.”

“And _you_ should stop babying them, Skuld. They’re not ‘guests’, they’re dead! Dying isn’t supposed to be comfortable. This is the bridge to the afterlife, not an overnight stay at the Ritz. Don’t look at me like that - I may be old but I know a thing or two about modern Midgard.”

Loki raised his hand.

“Yes, Loki?” Skuld was looking more like a schoolmistress every moment.

“If this is a bridge, why can’t I just … you know, walk back the other way and be alive again?”

Verðandi had climbed out of the urn by this point, and now walked toward him, losing her feathery-looking grey shawl off her right shoulder in the process. It didn’t seem to bother her overly. “You exist too much in the past and the future, dear boy. You should try being more like me. What good is the present if you do not notice it?”

“You’re saying that I should simply lie back and accept the present? Surrender to death? I will never be satisfied with that.”

“You seemed to welcome the idea not so long ago,” Urðr pointed out. “As I recall, you lay on Svartalfheim with a hole in your torso and cried for death to take you. It was pathetic in the extreme. I was wiping away tears.”

Loki huffed a short laugh. “Something tells me that it would take a great deal more than my pain to squeeze tears from you, hag.”

“There’s no need to make personal remarks!”

Skuld took control of the conversation again. “I’m sure both of you are enjoying this little exchange of pleasantries, but now is hardly the time to stand around shooting barbs at each other. Even metaphorical barbs are tiring to keep dodging. Verðandi has a point, Loki. Part of death is acceptance. If you insist on continuing to cling to your past, you will never rest, and I think we all know what that means.”

“I thought the whole putting the corpse in a vessel and setting fire to it was supposed to take care of that particular issue?”

Urðr smirked, a highly unsettling expression on a face that lacked so many teeth. “It usually does, with Aesir. But you aren’t really Aesir. You are Jotnar. You hid behind your pretty glamour for so many years that you almost forgot who you really are.”

Loki’s jaw clenched into a hard unforgiving line. “You go too far, old witch. Who I really am is none of your damned business.”

“Is that so? Take a look at yourself, Blue Peter. You can’t hide your true nature in the afterlife.”

He stared down at his own hands in dawning horror, seeing the ice-storm blue shade beginning to seep through the porcelain he assumed in life, the darker furrowed tribal heritage markings starting to snake their way across his perfect skin. His stomach turned; he tasted the bitter tang of desperate disgust in his own mouth, and shut his eyes against it. “ _No_ …!”

“So much rage against the inevitable,” mourned Verðandi softly. “Why do you resist so violently? You only cause yourself more pain and continue to damage your psyche, which I must tell you cannot really handle a great deal more strain.”

“I … I …” his head ached sharply as the truth dawned on him. “I _wanted_ to die. Why did I want to die? I have so much to live for!”

Skuld shook her head. “Only you can answer that question. I suggest you start as soon as possible, because you need to accept your own motivation before you can move on.”

He sat down on the floor-that-wasn’t-there, and blinked away the tears that threatened to fall. Now was not the time to indulge in weakness. “I thought it was the best thing I could do at the time. I … I wanted to save her. But my death won’t help her! She can’t stay in Asgard! And what if Fenrir has friends? There’ll be a war. I can’t leave her in the midst of that! She’s just a child, grown up on Midgard, sheltered from the realities of war in Asgard. And there was something else … something important. Damn it, why can’t I remember?”

Verðandi placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Death is not about the past. That’s why you can’t remember. Eventually, once you’ve accepted the situation, all your memories will fade and you will be ready to begin your new cycle.”

He shook her off impatiently and stood up. “I don’t _want_ to start a new cycle! Send me back to the old one! I’m not done! I’ve spent my life running away from my responsibilities. I refuse to spend my death in the same way. I have to go back to her.”

They drew together and began muttering. They seemed to have a great deal to say.

“Ladies, I hate to rush you, but could we move things along a bit?”

Verðandi made a tutting noise. “Why are you so impatient, dear boy?”

He shifted his feet. “I’m slightly anxious, that’s all. If you don’t make a decision sooner rather than later, I’m not going to have a body to go back to! I’m sure you understand my concern here.”

They drew back together again, and his sharp ears caught some of the words. “It’s not really our decision to make, after all - maybe we should send him to … you know…”

“Isn’t she…?”

“Yes, she is - which makes him her responsibility.”

“With any luck she will decide to keep him here.”

“You’re very keen for me to stay,” he interjected. “Normally, of course, I’d be flattered, but under the circumstances …”

Urðr cackled mockingly. “What’s the matter, Trickster, can’t stomach the idea of spending the rest of eternity with a hag?”

He shot back, deadpan, “It’s not high on my list, no.”

She scowled at him and returned to muttering.

Finally they moved out of their chattering circle. Urðr looked decidedly unhappy, but Skuld took charge as usual.

“We’ve come to a provisional decision. You will be sent below. She will choose what your fate will be. It’s irregular, but we feel it is the most fair option we can give you.”

“ _She_? Oh, just hold on a min -”

His protest was interrupted as the floor stopped even pretending to be a floor and he began to descend at high velocity into the abyss.

His last coherent thought before the darkness swallowed him into its angry gullet was, surprisingly, not profane. It was one word - one vitally important word that kept him connected to the past, to _life_ , by a single golden thread.

The word was a name.

 _Sol_.


	20. As I'm Walking Down These Halls, In the Darkest Days I've Known

It’s common to human nature to be numb in the face of horror. Fight-or-flight responses jumble together and the brain - the entire nervous system, in fact - freezes and crashes as it tries to process the unprocessable.

Seeing his body lying there on the steps of the hall should have been a visceral shock, but instead Sol felt only a passing chill at the unnaturally greyish pallor of his skin, and the flat, blank space where the light used to be in his eyes.

Her vision blurred. Something wet was on her cheeks - tears, she realized as she raised her hand to her face. When had she started crying?

“Child…” Dimly she identified the voice behind her as Frigga’s. “ _Child…_ you cannot stay here on the floor.”

Her own voice, distorted and weirdly detached, tried to disagree. She _could_ stay there on the floor, and she _would_. He was on the floor, after all.

But Frigga pulled her up and away from his lifeless form, and something about the firm fingers digging into the unresponsive flesh of her own arms suddenly ignited a terrible force inside her. Again. She lashed out, kicking, her voice issuing strange, foreign sounds somewhere between a curse and a scream. “I WON’T LEAVE HIM! You hear me? I _won’t_!”

Frigga released her, and came around to look into her face. “Sol, he is gone. There’s no more to be done for him. The important thing now is to keep Asgard safe. We are going to imprison Fenrir, but I do not know if even my _seiðr_ and our strongest cell will be enough to hold him.”

Sol felt strange, as if she were crawling out of her own skin and turning into something bitter and vicious. Was this how Loki had felt?

“Well, the equivalent in the other world kept Loki prisoner, so I’m guessing it will be strong enough.”

Frigga stopped dead. “ _What?_ ”

Sol stood up, shaky but determined and extremely acidic. “Yes, you heard me. You let your precious son be locked up and forgotten by the whole of Asgard. You left him underneath the city to rot slowly forever. He only got out because Thor needed him for …” she realized she had already gone too far, but it was too late now, and she sucked in a deep breath, “For a revenge mission. To avenge _you_.”

“I … died? And _Loki_ \- that’s why he wanted to stay. Oh, Norns. What a terrible, terrible mess. I can never ask his forgiveness. Why would I allow such a thing to happen? And are you telling me that _Odin_ put him in prison? How could he do this to our child?”

Sol shook her head, beginning to feel less vicious and a whole lot more regretful. “I’m sorry, Frigga, I should never have told you that. I don’t know what came over me. ”

Frigga eyed her sharply. “I think I do. How long have you been learning the ways of _seiðr_ , child?”

“... Magic? I haven’t. I don’t understand - why are you asking me?”

The King’s Mother took her hands and ran her own fingertips over every line, every smooth pad, every whorl, arch and friction ridge. “Sol, do you remember how Fenrir ended up on the floor over there?” She gestured to where several Einherjar, as well as a narrow-hipped man with a flamboyant moustache and a larger-than-life Viking whose face was partly obscured by a wealth of beard, were securing the motionless giant with chains.

Sol frowned with the effort of recall. “I … no, I don’t. I mean … wait, that can’t be right. I think my brain is mixing up the sequence of events.”

“It was you, Sol. You felled the giant. You used your magic.”

Everything came to a screeching halt in Sol’s head for the second time that day, but for a very different reason. She heard her own voice say, feebly,

“But I don’t have magic, I’m human.”

Frigga smiled gently. “Oh, even in your world people can have magic, Sol! But I don’t think you _are_ entirely human. You know that I can sense elements from other realms, and I didn’t feel it at first because Loki -” her voice hitched, and then she continued, “Because Loki had such a strong aura about him. But you, child, even though you are from this reality, you also have an aura that is … too _much_ for just a regular Midgardian.”

Sol felt dizzy, as if she were standing on a huge outside elevator with a glass floor and had just made the mistake of looking down. “What are you saying?”

“You’re not entirely Midgardian, and you have strong magic. Exceptionally strong, if you could do what you did without any training.”

“That … that’s not possible. I remember my mother! And my father was alive until only a few years ago … how could I not be entirely human? That’s ridiculous. I …” her voice frayed like an overtightened violin string. “I want to go home.”

Frigga squeezed her hands compassionately, but Sol’s chest felt like it was being slowly crushed in some hideous medieval torture device. “Please,” she gasped, “please let me go home. I just want to go back to my life before all this shit happened and made me believe in something more than I can ever have or be. He made me feel like I could become something different, but he’s gone and I don’t want to be part of whatever war is going to break out. I just want to go home and forget all of this.”

“There is one more thing you must do for him,” said Frigga.

“And what’s that?” She barely registered the gentle arm around her tense shoulders.

“In order for his spirit to ascend, you must say your farewell to him. You are all he had. We are not ... we cannot do this for him.”

Sol backed away. “You can’t ask me to do that. Not yet, I’m not ready to say goodbye to him. I can’t.”

“If you do not, his spirit will remain locked in his body for eternity, and that is dangerous - he will never rest and never find peace. He has had so little peace in life - would you deny him peace in death as well?” The King’s Mother was nearly in tears.

“Of course not!” snapped Sol. She knew she was being selfish and irrational, but her heart clenched like a fist every time she thought about his body just _lying_ there doing nothing, when only a short time ago he had been so very alive, quicksilver and vibrant. It was as if a part of herself was lying there too, silent and grey and cooling with the marble. “Just give me more time. I’m not ready to say goodbye.”

“There is another way.”

Sol and Frigga looked around, startled. A tall, striking woman with golden hair stood behind them, looking down at Loki’s body. She was dressed for battle, her shining armour accentuating the broadness of her shoulders and the strong muscles of her calves.

“Sif!” said Frigga.

“I returned from my duties in Vanaheim because Heimdall called me. I arrived to find the battle already won and this brave warrior felled in the King’s Hall. There are times when you must let go, but right now there is another option. You are his family, yes?”

Sol stuttered. “M- me?”

Lady Sif, the Golden Warrior, Sybil and Sword of Asgard, nodded slowly. “Yes, little Midgardian, you are his family. You alone bear the burden of his future. Either you must gather yourself to say farewell, or you must undertake an even more dangerous mission: to take him back from the arms of Death and plead his cause in the Court of Niflheim.”

“I have to do _what_?”

“You must be brave, little _seiðkona,_ and bring him back.”

Frigga put up a hand in protest. “Sif, she is very young, and does not know her own magic. Bringing a loved one back from the Court of Niflheim has only been achieved once in all of time - and you want _Sol_ to try? She is strong, yes, but she has no training and very little knowledge of what she would face. It could be a disaster.”

“She will succeed. I have barely met her and I have faith in her - why are you trying to stop her?”

Frigga sighed heavily. “I am not trying to stop her, Sif, but I don’t think you understand what you’re asking of her.”

“And I don’t think you understand what _you_ are asking of her, my mother. You would have her give up on him, and that is something she cannot do. I know, I see her heart - it is like mine, and I would not be willing to abandon my father in her position.”

Sol’s mouth dropped open. “Wait, _what_?”

Sif looked surprised. “You didn’t know?”

Frigga shook her head. “I was trying to help bolster the shock by _not_ telling her everything at once.”

Sif shrugged. “I always say it’s better to know everything at once and handle it later.”

Frigga tried not to smile. “That’s why you married Thor.”

Sif scowled, a startling and ferocious expression on her beautiful face. “Do not speak to me of Thor, my mother.”

“Is he in your bad graces again? What did he do this time?”

“It is of no importance. We should be helping Sol to prepare for her journey.”

Sol sat down hard on the marble floor. “My _father_?” That would certainly explain a few things - the kinship she felt with him, the weird affinity for the alien who dropped out of the sky into her holiday pub, the connection strong enough to send him to her across an entirely unfamiliar reality, and the wild, bitter emptiness she felt now that he was gone. But …

“But he doesn’t exist in this reality - at least not as himself. How can he be my father?”

Sif shrugged again. “I am not sure. I see many things, but some are more clouded than others. I think that his alternate _here_ also went to Midgard and apparently you were the result. He is similar enough in self and magic that you feel this connection to each other.”

The air suddenly seemed hard to breathe. “My _father_ …”

“You are his family, or at least the nearest thing he has to family in this cosmos. It is up to you to decide what happens to him next.”

“It’s a lot to take in.”

“Then decide now, and take it in later.” Sif, a woman of action and decision, was growing impatient with Sol’s rigid shock.

Frigga patted Sol’s shoulder. “Pay her no mind, child. She’s all fire and thunder and steel, like my son. You need more time for things, I know. But Loki may not have much time left. Once the Court of Niflheim sends him to his place, he cannot be brought back. Your only chance to see him again in this life is to go now before they bring their sentence.”

To Sif she said, “The battle may not yet be over. I do not believe Heimdall would have brought you back from Vanaheim Post if he did not think you would be needed. Prepare your warriors, and bring in the Valkyrjur.”

Sol’s head finally began to clear. For the first time in days, she knew exactly what she needed to do, and it was terrifying yet somehow strangely refreshing at the same time.

“I’ll go.”

Sif smiled triumphantly. “I told you, my mother. She is strong! Sol, little _seiðkona,_ take heart. Be a warrior and a witness and bring your father home.”

Frigga looked into Sol’s eyes with an earnest intensity that was almost painful. “Are you certain you want to do this? Because the journey there is not easy, and the journey back even less so. You must be absolutely convinced in yourself that you can do this.”

Sol drew herself up. “I’m scared as hell, honestly. But yes. I have to do this. I can’t leave him there, I just can’t. There’s so much more for us in the future, I can feel it! Tell me what I need to do.”

Frigga smiled softly. “You have the heart of a warrior. Very well. Listen carefully.”


	21. Death is the Ultimate Woman, Show Your Most Hidden Face

Her blue-black hair shone in the light of the wax tapers. There was no mistaking that face even in the half-profile that showed her best side. She turned toward him and he wondered when she had started wearing a black mask over the other side of her face. “Papa, is that you?”

“Hela! Yes, yes, it’s me. Forgive me for my appearance. I’ve, er, been dying to see you.”

She was up off her throne and walking toward him before he even registered it. 

_ Smack _ . 

“OW!”

She withdrew her leather-gloved hand with a satisfied hum and straightened the spiked necklace that rested on her chest. It looked like it was made of bones. It probably  _ was _ . “That was for letting your wretched father banish me.”

Loki ground his teeth. “He wasn’t my father, and he made you queen of Helheim. You  _ like _ it here!”

“That isn’t the point!”

_ Smack _ , again. 

“OW! What was  _ that _ for?”

She glared at him. “That was for not visiting me more than once every three hundred years.”

“What is it with the women in my life and their penchant for slapping me in the face when normal people would make polite conversation?”

“Maybe we all know you too well.”

There was not a great deal to say to that - not if he wanted to avoid another slap from the Queen of the Dead. 

“So why  _ are _ you here?” she demanded. “I’m not stupid or vain enough to imagine that you came to visit me from a sense of family obligation. I’m an embarrassment to you, and we both know it. The only sensible possibility is that you want something.”

He hated how well his eldest child knew him even without being around him for more than a few days every millennium since her birth. “I …”

But she was not listening to him … wait. Was she  _ sniffing _ him? After a brief olfactory investigation she stepped back, and her eyes gleamed with amusement. “You’re  _ dead _ !”

He folded his arms in a gesture that he hoped was more impressive than it felt. “Brava. Now that we’ve got the painfully obvious out of the way, I need your help.”

If her eyes rolled any harder they’d pop out of her head and tumble across the obsidian floor. “Ah, there it is. I knew you wanted something. What can I do for you?”

“I need you to make me, well,  _ not dead _ .” 

She pouted. It was faintly terrifying. “But death looks so good on you, Papa.”

He fought to control himself. Acting on his immediate impulse to box her ears would achieve nothing and very likely end painfully for him. “Hela, I can’t stay here. I have unfinished business in the world of the living.” 

She shuddered delicately when he said the word  _ living _ . “Because you’re the first and only  _ gast  _ to say they have unfinished business of course.”

“Did you just call me a whore, or a guest?”

She tapped his cheek with her index finger. “Now is not the time for etymological debates, Papa.  _ Gasts _ come to me every day begging for their miserable lives back. They have wives and children upstairs, or financial enterprises that they just can’t leave in the hands of their feckless cousins, or they were writing the next  _ Völsungasaga _ . I’ve heard it all. Why should I let you go, when I have you as a captive audience for the first time in my life? It’s not every daughter who gets the opportunity to keep her absent father in her kingdom for eternity.”

He sighed. “In that case, I suppose I’ll have to make a deal with you.” 

Hela raised the eyebrow that wasn’t hidden behind the black half-mask. “I’m listening…” 

“I’ll come and visit you regularly, if you’ll let me go back.” 

She tilted her head on one side. “Define ‘regularly’.” 

“... Annually?”

She sucked her teeth impatiently. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Papa. I haven’t got all day, you know. There are hundreds coming in every moment, and the paperwork gets  _ so  _ tedious if I allow it to backlog.” 

“Biannually?” 

She folded her arms. “I’d hoped, when you said  _ deal _ , that you’d take it seriously.” 

“I’ll visit you quarterly, and I’ll bring you chocolate. That’s my last offer.”

She threw back her head in a peal of laughter. It sounded like a murder of crows cackling in a tree, with a hint of banshee hysterics in the background. “I’m the one that calls the shots down here, Papa, so I don’t know why you think you’re making an offer.” 

He looked at her and allowed his compassion to cloud his eyes and show him an imaginary vision of what she would have been like as a child. He’d never actually seen her until she was already grown and sitting on the throne of Helheim. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried - although perhaps he had given up too easily after the first time the Norns, charged with protecting and training his tiny daughter to be queen, had thrown him out of the Hall of Niflheim. His guilt had taken care of the small chance that he might try again while she was still under their guardianship. The Norns had been eager to relinquish their temporary regency over the dead (ruling the Necropolis wasn’t really in their purview, but they’d been forced to do it when Tuoni had attempted to form a rebellion against Odin and had his ass handed to him several times over before being imprisoned under the ice of the deepest part of his own river) and had crowned her as soon as she reached her majority. 

All of this meant that Loki’s absence in her life was not so much desired as impossible to avoid. His guilt, her upbringing, and Odin’s harsh-eyed watchfulness combined to make a perfect storm of bad parenting. And the silver-sharp sheen of the narrow, ancient circlet in her hair was a powerful reminder of just how vicious Odin’s wrath could be: as soon as Death’s Embrace was placed on the head of Loki’s daughter, she was no longer merely his child, no longer even just the offspring of two witches, but an entity of such unimaginable power that her existence transcended time and space alike, immortal and constant at the roots of all the aligning dimensional World Trees.  She was no longer Hela the half-breed witch child, but Hela the Queen and Goddess of the Dead. It was ironic that on the day she attained immortality, the child she had been was lost irretrievably. Death’s Embrace tended to have that effect. 

“I’m sorry, Hela.” His voice was startlingly rough in the silence of her vast, black-marble courtroom. She tapped her fingers on his right cheekbone. 

“Oh, Papa, you have a lot to be sorry for. But at least you made it in time for the anniversary.” 

He blinked. “Anniversary?”

Her smile was positively angelic, if angels looked like green-eyed witch queens with spiny jewellery. “Well, if you’d come a year ago you would have been at the wedding, but I suppose the anniversary is better than nothing.” 

The feeling of the floor disappearing under him was a sensation that was becoming annoyingly familiar of late, only this time the floor  _ wasn’t  _ actually disappearing. “What wedding?”

“Mine, of course, you poor old codger. I have to say I think I looked pretty damn spectacular, as all brides should. That, and menacing as a legion of Valkyrjur. Seph looked twice as gorgeous and every bit as blood-curdling.” 

“So you and … Seph … you’ve known each other a good while, then?” Loki was well aware how feeble his question sounded, but he was feeling extremely off-balance right now, and dimly conscious of the expected role of a father in this kind of situation. 

“Eh, a century or so, not too long, but long enough. You know how it goes.” 

“A  _ century? _ Flaming fires of - er, I mean, isn’t this a little sudden?” 

Her laughter this time rang out like a death-knell. “You’ve been hanging around upstairs for much too long, Papa, you’re starting to sound as fusty as an old  _ afi _ .”

A sudden thought gripped him. “An  _ afi _ ? Gods, please don’t tell me that’s your roundabout way of letting me know I’m a grandfather. I can take only so many shocks in one day.” 

She patted his shoulder. “Poor old  _ afi _ . No, I’m sorry to tell you there aren’t any small hellions running around my court … yet.”

“So if it’s your anniversary, where’s your spouse? Shouldn’t you be … I don’t know, canoodling over a black candle and twenty Vanir skulls right about now?” 

A dark cloud seemed to settle over his daughter’s face. “Well. As it happens she isn’t here just yet. She has to go up and visit her mother regularly - it was the only way they’d allow us to get married. Otherwise Demeter would still be holding the world’s grain reserves hostage and inundating me with emaciated  _ gasts _ . She’s a monster-in-law, if you ask me, but the wife wants to keep her happy, so …” She shrugged. “I’m expecting her back any moment.” 

Loki felt his jaw drop. “ _ Are you telling me, _ ” he whispered, “ _ that you’re married to Kore?” _

Hela smirked, a slow, lazy slide of her lips into a sliver of risqué decadence. “Oh no, Papa.  _ Persephone _ . I mean, she’s hardly a maiden anymore.” 

Loki rolled his eyes. There are things no father really wants to hear about his child, even when he is a Jotun dressed like Aesir and she is an immortal undead goddess. 

“Hela, much as I enjoy talking with you -”

She moved over to the black marble throne at the end of the courtroom. “Yes, yes, I know - get the pleasantries over and send you back to your poor old body. The thing is, there are  _ rules _ . You can’t just wander in and out of the Underworld whenever you feel like it, especially not as a  _ gast _ . It’s not Disneyland.” 

“But you’re the Queen. Don’t you make the rules? Surely you can … you know,  _ bend _ them a bit as well.” 

The way she sat down on the throne made him feel both inordinately proud and uncomfortably nervous. “Bend them, yes, maybe. But your idea of bending is more like trying to stretch an inch of cloth to make a giant’s underpants.” 

“Your, er,  _ vivid _ word pictures aside, I don’t really care what you have to do to get me back up there just as long as you do it. Quickly.” 

“It’s not as easy as you’re trying to make it sound.  _ You _ know how this stuff works, Papa! Magic doesn’t enjoy being stretched beyond its rules, and you cannot make a disturbance the size of an Alfheim moth sneezing without Thunderhead up there causing a hurricane somewhere.” 

He growled in frustration. “There must be some way.”

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but a low rumbling interrupted her apparent train of thought, and her face lit up. It was a weird effect, this simple bright joy on the face of Death. 

“Seph!” 

A column of rust-coloured smoke appeared at the corner of the room, quickly followed by a similar column in a different corner, but green instead of rust. 

The joy was checked in its path by a frown. “Who the - ?” 

The rust column dissipated to reveal a voluptuous woman of medium height, whose thick, vibrant red hair reached almost to her hips. Golden freckles dusted her face like the whisper of a comet’s tail, and her smile was as ferociously radiant as the rest of her. “Hela, my love, I missed you  _ so much _ !” 

The green column dissipated less gracefully than Persephone’s transport, and spat out a small, elfin girl with white-blond hair, who stumbled onto the floor and shook herself rather like a wet labrador puppy. . 

Loki felt as if his eyes were going to pop out of his head. “ _ SOL?” _

She stopped and stared at him for a split second before flinging herself across the room and half strangling him in the biggest hug he could ever remember being subjected to. 

“You’re here! You’re really here! I was so afraid I wouldn’t find you.” 

His arms came around her slowly, almost of their own accord, as if they’d detached themselves from his consciousness and developed their own. “Sol … why are  _ you _ here?” 

She looked up at him with total openness in her eyes. “I came to get you out, of course!” 

Hela coughed behind him. “Who is that?”

Loki turned, Sol still hanging onto his left arm as if she was afraid to let go in case he vanished. “This is … Sol.”

Hela’s eyes narrowed. “And what claim do you have on Loki, little mortal?”

Sol took a breath so deep Loki could hear it trembling in her chest. 

“I have come to the Court of Niflheim to plead his cause. I am … his daughter.” 


	22. I Can See My Life Flashing Before My Eyes

If you held your breath for a second, you could have heard a pin drop, but Sol was too busy staving off the mother of all anxiety attacks to even think about holding her breath. 

The process to get here had been disorienting, to say the least. Technically, she wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t exactly awake and kicking either right now. The Aesir word for what they’d done to her,  _ svefnthorn _ , translated both prosaically and enigmatically to ‘sleep thorn’. As far as she understood the procedure from her earthbound biological perspective, the ‘thorn’ - actually some kind of intravenous device - injected her with an agent designed to induce hypothermic suspended animation. Whether the agent was chemical or magical, the result was the same - she’d started feeling weird and sleepy, and then the next thing she knew, she was hurtling through what felt like endless cloud mass in varying psychedelic colours before being dropped into this huge, black room.

She felt slightly sick. 

The spiky woman on the throne looked stunned. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you correctly.” 

Sol swallowed the lump in her throat and said firmly, “Then I’ll repeat what I said. I’m Loki’s daughter. I’m here to ask you to release him and send him back … up there.” 

Loki looked highly uncomfortable. “I … they told you?” 

“It was kind of an accident, but yeah, they did.” 

The other girl, the curvy redhead who looked friendly and warm but also like she could kick your spine through your teeth without blinking, moved closer to the throne and whispered something in the spiky woman’s ear. 

“My wife reminds me that it’s our anniversary and that I  _ really _ don’t have time for games.” 

“This isn’t a  _ game _ !” Hot anger started to build in Sol’s chest. “I’m here to beg for his life to be returned so that he can go back to protect his family!” 

“Why should I help him kill my brother?” said the spiky woman, standing up suddenly and looking distinctly annoyed. She turned to Loki. “Oh, you thought I wouldn’t find out?” 

“Wait …” Sol was lost in calculations. “If Fenrir is your son … does this mean I have a  _ sister _ ?” 

“And a sister-in-law,” drawled Mrs Spiky, apparently dealing with this news rather better than Sol, whose brain had decided to take a lunch break. She circled Sol and Loki, the skirts of her gown hushing on the floor in a susurrus reminiscent of a snake uncoiling itself. “Seph, my love, say hello to the newest member of the family. It seems we’re growing exponentially these days. First my barbarian of a brother, now a …” she stopped, puzzling, and took Sol’s chin in her gloved hand. “What  _ are _ you? You don’t look Aesir or Jotun.” 

“I’m human - Midgardian, I mean.” Sol couldn’t look Mrs Spiky in the eye. Eyes were funny things at the best of times, and when they were bright, virulent green and glowing with a weird and sepulchral light it was  _ not _ the best of times. 

Mrs Spiky patted her chin absently and turned back to Loki. “Really, Papa? Of all the realms and races you could have chosen? You’re supposed to be the Silvertongue of Asgard, and yet all you manage to hook is one angry wood-witch and a pathetic little Midgardian?” 

Without thinking Sol slapped her face, hard. “Nothing about my mother was pathetic!”

The aurora-green eyes flashed, then settled again. “My new sister has spirit!” 

“She’s got more than spirit, Hela,” said Loki, and his tone was a warning. 

_ Oh, dear God. _ “H-hela? As in, the … Goddess of the Dead?”

Hela’s smile was as sharp as her necklace. “Yes, sister mine. Fortunately for you, I’m feeling benevolent today. It’s our wedding anniversary.” 

Seph moved over to Hela and wrapped her arms around her wife’s waist. “It  _ is _ . And I had some rather important plans for tonight, my Lethal Lady.” 

“You can talk! You’re the one who managed to talk your mother out of destroying the entire food crop system on Midgard because she doesn’t like me. I think of the two of us, you’re far scarier. Also, tell me more about those plans, because I very much like the sound of that.” 

Seph murmured something in her ear, and a spot of hell-hot colour tinged Hela’s eerily pale skin. “ _ Oh,” _ she said. 

“But we can’t do any of that with your family still here, darling,” prompted Seph, throwing a surreptitious wink in Loki’s direction. 

“No, I suppose not,” said Hela vaguely, then cleared her throat and frowned. “I mean,  _ absolutely not _ . Good grief. You’re right, they should leave.”  She took Seph’s hand and sighed at her father. 

“Papa, you win this time. Sister - take him and get out. My wife and I have dinner plans.” 

Loki’s face was doing something very odd. Sol took pity on him. “Come on,  _ Dad _ . Let’s get out of here before she changes her mind and locks us in her dungeon.”

Seph grinned, her teeth shining white in the warm-brown skin of her face. “She wouldn’t. It’s going to be occupied.” 

Loki groaned. “Get me out of here before I have an aneurysm.” 

Sol stalled. “I … I don’t know how. They didn’t explain how to get back.”

The frown on his face was rough, like an impenetrable rockface. “Sol - I need you to be honest with me. What did you do to get here?” 

“Your Mum and a lady called Eir stuck me with a  _ svefnthorn _ ,” she said, then added as an aside, “I hate needles.” 

He breathed again. “Oh, thank the Norns. I thought for a moment you’d done something completely stupid. Still, we’d better not hang around too long or you’ll end up stuck here as well. The  _ svefnthorn _ can have … unfortunate effects if the soul is absent the body for an extended period of time.” 

Hela waved a pale hand in their direction, her main focus entirely consumed by her wife. “You’ll have to use the traditional route, Papa. I’m a little busy for smoke transport right now. Ta-ta. See you in a month - don’t forget to bring chocolate.” 

Loki grumbled under his breath, and motioned to Sol to follow him. 

“How do we get out?” she whispered. 

A shadow of his characteristic wicked smirk crossed his face. “Oh, there’s always a way. You just have to know what you’re looking for.” 

He raised his arms, straight so that they were more or less at right angles to his chest, and began to hum in a quiet, low tone. Sol stared, fascinated, and then startled, as his hands began to turn a dark blue and the huge black room fell away with a weird grinding sound and a rumbling blast like the voice of a hundred cannons, leaving her alone in a dimly lit stone passageway with the person who was almost her father.

The humming stopped abruptly with a retching cough. Loki pulled his hands back and cradled them against his chest, leaning back against the wall and slowly sliding down to crouch on the ground. His body trembled.

“What just happened?” Sol asked, worried. 

He was rocking himself back and forth now, chanting something almost inaudibly and shaking his head from side to side as if in the deepest possible denial. 

Sol approached him slowly, and put her arm around his shaking shoulders. “What’s happening?” 

He mumbled something she couldn’t quite catch, and then shook her off like an irritating fly. She sat nearby but not touching him, because obviously he was going through something so traumatic that he couldn’t endure or process any further stimuli. 

She caught herself humming to him in a soothing murmur, an ancient melody that she didn’t even remember learning or hearing before. This place had a strange effect on a person. It felt as if all the centuries of mortal existence were combining and twisting into one ouroboros, a never-ending cyclic loop - life, death, the arcane and inscrutable fabric of timespace itself, all meaningless and all one. All that mattered in this one eternal moment was Loki. 

In a flash of naked steel the mesmeric effect was broken, and she came to her feet without even thinking about it. Four … people? … had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Their bodies were somehow faded-looking, as if they’d been put through a hot wash too many times. They were armed with short swords and their faces bore the expressions of a group of  _ gourmands _ just sitting down to dinner at a Michelin five-star restaurant. They were looking straight at the mess that was Loki, and their eyes were  _ greedy _ . 

“Back off!” Sol snarled. 

“ _ We have waited an eternity to see the Mischief-maker brought down to us, _ ” they hissed, their voices distorted, twisted and jagged-edged. “ _ The Father of Monsters has no idea what waits for him here. Death cannot save him from our vengeance. His eternity will be pain as ours has been. _ ”

“You’ll have to go through me first,” said Sol, feeling much less brave than she sounded. Those  _ sax _ blades looked extremely sharp. 

“ _ Who are you to stop us from tearing him to pieces, Midgardian? Run away now or we will start with you. _ ”

She stood as tall as she could and raised her chin, daring them to act on their words. “I am the Daughter of Loki, and if you take one more step I promise I’ll make you bleed in places you didn’t know you had.” 

Were they laughing? Possibly. It sounded like knives screeching on a plate. 

“ _ You’re young and small and weak. We will drink you like milk, pathetic child. _ ” 

She felt her fingertips beginning to buzz and crackle with latent energy, the magic she had only just begun to recognize and acknowledge. She knew it was strong enough to knock out a Frost Giant, but was it enough to stop these  _ gasts _ from torturing Loki?  _ Holy shit  _ they looked determined.

Behind her she could Loki muttering something that sounded suspiciously like  _ leave me and get out while you can _ , but she ignored him. He was in the middle of a crisis and there was no way in, well,  _ Hel  _ that she would walk away now. 

“I don’t take kindly to being threatened. This is your last warning. Back. The Fuck. Off.” 

But they were cackling and weaving in and out with their swords flashing and sparking under the light of the torches on the wall, and she was lifting her hands, shaking with exertion, and her hands were  _ glowing _ a pale, ethereal green, and the electricity of her power was arcing between her fingers like tiny storm surges, and she was closing her eyes to concentrate and … 

_ WHOOSH.  _

_ CRACK _ . 

Silence. 

She cautiously opened one eye. 

A woman wearing golden armour stood in the centre of a pile of ashes that  _ might _ have once been a bunch of angry  _ gasts _ . 

“You are Sol.” Her voice was deep, rich, and confident. It wasn’t a question, and Sol nodded, unable to really formulate anything even vaguely wordlike. 

“I am Brunnhilde, Head Valkyr of the King’s Guard. He is not well.” She was looking at Loki.

Sol shook her head. “N-no. He .. his hands .. blue .. he …”

The valkyr walked over to the shivering Trickster and hefted him over her armoured shoulder as if he weighed nothing. “It’s time to leave. Are you coming, or do I have to carry both of you?” 


	23. Guess I Thought I'd Have to Change the World To Make You See Me

Loki existed. This was all that could be said for him currently. The effort of using his magic in this place of death and shadow had stripped back the layers of illusion that were interwoven so tightly with his own self and his  _ rún  _ that they were as involuntary as breathing or blinking. His hands had betrayed him, and the spreading blue chill of his natural form caused a fury of utter panic to well up inside him in a swirling, dark maelstrom. Every nerve screeched in warning, every hair stood on end and he shuddered as if in the grip of a seizure. The thoughts in his head became crowded, cluttered, too busy for him to comprehend or organize. His magic surged and ebbed chaotically inside his body, crashing around his entire nervous system in wildly off-balance waves, and the air seemed too thick to breathe. It was suddenly all too much, all of it - and he spiralled downward with the maelstrom, completely overwhelmed.

Things had started to go wrong a very long time ago, before he was even born, really. It was hard for him to pinpoint a single defining, pivotal moment that fixed him on this path of destruction, for there had been many such moments. The battle on Jotunheim, the Destroyer, the bridge and the abyss, the Tesseract, New York, Svartalfheim, all swam and blurred in his head like ink on the surface of a boiling lake. Through the muddle of voices, faces and sensations, one event shot through and pierced him with gut-wrenching clarity. 

The day he became king for the second time.

*      *      *      *      *

_ Odin cannot be gone. Such an eventuality goes against the universe in all its complex glory. It cannot be true - and yet, he lies motionless on the ground without the web of golden soul strands to keep him breathing. Frantic, trembling hands tug at his lifeless body, shaking and pulling and finally beating him, punching the fallen father over and over again in a rage born of desperation.  _

_ This cannot be happening. Not again. The last time was terrible, but there was always the knowledge that Odin would wake, however long it took. This time there is no such belief to dampen the shock. _

_ Despite everything, the years of disfavour and injustice and prejudice, the lies and pretence, the disappointment and hate … despite it all, Loki does not wish Odin dead.  _

_ Yet dead he is, and dead he remains. _

_ Loki, abandoning his Einherjar guise, waits on his knees next to the corpse, trying to stamp down the powerful emotions in order to think clearly and rationally. The Allfather is dead - Loki is thought to be dead - Asgard needs the Allfather - Thor is next in line - but Thor is conflicted, torn between his Midgardian love and his filial and royal duties. Asgard needs Odin, not only because of his leadership, but because he is the symbol of Asgard’s invincibility. He must remain untouchable by grief, by death, by anything that weakens his position as the ruler of the Realm Eternal. Otherwise, the cracks under the plaster will grow and the entire edifice, the whole power structure so carefully and, yes,  _ **_ruthlessly_ ** _ built over countless millennia will crumble.  _

_ The seed of a plan begins to germinate, working itself through the rising terror.  _

_ It takes a great deal of effort. The sweat is pouring from Loki’s brow as he throws himself fully into concentration. His hands flutter and dart from one position to another in rapid, intricate movements, weaving his seiðr over the Allfather’s head, before coming to rest palms downward on the white-haired temples. It is a form of magic that he has never used before, but if it works, he will be able to cast the most thorough and impenetrable disguise of his entire life.  _

_ The green light grows upward like a strange ethereal plant from the old Aesir’s head until its seeking tendrils find their destination. Connected in a way that was never possible while the Allfather was alive, Loki and the body of his adoptive parent begin the hazardous cycle. Tears roll unbidden from the younger man’s widening eyes as the force of his own seiðr hits him full in the front of his consciousness.  _

_ When he can take no more of the information he is pulling from the dead king’s disappearing life force, he breaks the connection and, with a gasp, collapses backwards, his head hitting the floor.  _

_ After his mind stops spinning, he is able to begin casting an intricate glamour, perform the family funeral ritual - the irony is not lost on him - and then hide the Allfather’s corpse.  _

_ When the Einherjar enter the throne room, Odin is sitting where he belongs as though nothing has happened.  _

_ “Your majesty,” their spokesman begins, with a respectful bow. “The Prince requests an audience.” _

_ “Thor? By all means, admit him.”  _

_ The line between past and future is five words long, and now there is no going back.  _

 

*      *       *       *       *

He didn’t know how long he had been asleep. His limbs felt like lead, or more accurately, like fluffy and insubstantial cloud  _ encased _ in lead. 

“Where am I?” he croaked, still not able to get used to the feeling of dislocation that seemed to be occurring with distressing frequency these days. Ever since the unpleasantness with the abyss, he didn’t enjoy waking up in unfamiliar surroundings; it made him exquisitely anxious. 

A blurred face hovered over him. Voices muttered, still somewhat indistinct. His head was spinning, his consciousness teetering on the precipice above a pit of darkness, and he was about to fall … 

The flash was unexpected, and the buzzing blast of magic even more so. It hit him full in the face and he sat up with a jolt, gasping as if he’d just broken through the surface of a deep, ice-covered ocean. The air felt icy hot in his lungs, but he was awake, and nothing was blurry anymore. 

He was sitting on a bed in the  _ læknirskála,  _ Eir’s healing room, and Eir herself was standing near him with a furrow in her brow. Sol was next to her. 

“Sol! What happened?”

“I had to pull you back,” she said, rushing her words together as if attempting to get them out before they choked her. 

It all came back to him in a big, heaving tide. “I … died. You came to get me.” Then, grimly, “I need to have a chat with my mother.”

Eir made the tutting sound universal to all healers, and shook her head. “You’re not going anywhere at the moment. You’ve been  _ dead _ . You must rest now. We will take care of you.” 

Another, even less pleasant fact slowly swam to the front of his mind. “My  _ son _ .” 

“He is being dealt with,” said Eir with the calm of someone who knows far too many things and doesn’t care very much about any of them. 

“And that’s another thing!” said Loki angrily, not caring that he was remembering all out of sequence. “Why in the Nine did you authorize the  _ svefnthorn _ process? She’s not used to magic yet! You could have killed her, and then we’d both be stuck down there drinking mead with my daughter the Death Queen and her Chaos Wife.” 

“Nobody else could do it,” said Sol. “It had to be me. Also, I may not be used to magic, but I’d say I’m picking it up pretty quickly. I didn’t die. Brunnhilde and I brought you back, and now you’re going to rest and get used to being alive again.” 

“Brunnhilde? Oh, no.” He grimaced. “The last thing I need is to be indebted to a pushy, vengeful wish-maid who likes to hang around battlefields and take people’s souls off them.” 

Sol raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you two have a history. In any case, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It’s me that owes her the debt, not you.” 

“Is that supposed to comfort me? I’ll have to dissolve the debt, which means I’ll probably have to do something unspeakable to let you out of the bargain.” 

“Bargain? I didn’t make a deal with the bloody Devil, Loki!” 

“You’d be better off if you  _ had _ ,” he grumbled. 

Eir  _ tsked _ and waved Sol away. “You’re getting him all worked up,” she said severely. “Go and play with your evil brother and leave your father to me. He needs rest.” 

“Do  **_not_ ** get involved with Fenrir,” snapped Loki, brushing off Eir’s concerned hands. “Leave him alone. Let Sif and the Warriors sort him out. You may have done a great deal in the past few days - but you’re still very new to everything and I do not want to have to take another trip down to my other daughter to explain why her interdimensional family keeps ending up dead.” 

Sol grinned. Despite exhaustion and the general feeling of utter disorientation she was experiencing due to the …  _ weirdness  _ of everything, she just couldn’t help it. Loki was so funny when he was protective and exasperated at the same time. “This family is seriously fucked up, Loki. You do realize that, right?” 

The noise he made was unintelligible but deeply expressive. She got the impression that there was still a lot he hadn’t told her, and she wondered if he ever would. Maybe there were some secrets in his long, complicated past that he would never be comfortable with revealing. But so  _many_ hidden things couldn't be good for anyone, no matter how ancient and powerful. Eventually such things had a habit of catching up with you, and when that did finally happen, even the oldest god in the universe would need people he trusted to help him pick up the pieces. 


	24. I've Come Face to Face with the Enemy

Sol stood in front of Fenrir, staring him down. She’d already defeated him once, but that had been pretty much entirely accidental, and she was secretly very glad that this time there was an invisible barrier between them. Not that she was about to admit that to him. 

He sat on the floor of the cell, legs crossed under him, hands resting on his knees. An aura of weird calmness surrounded him. Sol had expected that he would be pacing up and down, restless and fierce, but instead here he was, looking like the front cover of Yoga Magazine. Still, despite his apparent serenity, there was a persistent crackle of tension in the space between Fenrir and Sol, and it wasn’t just the forcefield.

“Why have you come?” His voice, rumbling in the sterile quiet of the cell, startled her. 

“I wanted to see how they were handling you.” 

His eyes flashed red. “Handling me? Am I a child, then, or just a wild animal?” 

“Neither. But you  _ are _ a threat to this realm.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “And what do you know of this realm, little girl from Midgard?” The way he said the Aesir name for Earth was an insult. 

“I know that these are good people, and I know that you want them dead.” 

He rose, slowly unfolding his legs in a graceful, deliberate motion. Even with the safety of the forcefield, Sol felt her heart begin to flutter anxiously. He was so  _ big _ . 

“And you put yourself on the side of these ‘good people’. I suppose it would be too much to expect you to know the things they have done.” 

“I’m sure they’ve made mistakes, but -” 

He cut her off with a snarl. “Genocide is not a  _ mistake _ . My people fought and died by the thousands because the mighty Aesir of the Golden City were afraid of a prophecy. Even across realities the Jotnar were hunted and slaughtered by the armies of Asgard. And Loki, our …” he struggled with the word before forcing it out between his teeth, “ _ father _ , all these years denying his blood, his true nature, because of the hatred of the Aesir.” 

Sol felt sick. “Frigga said they had done terrible things …” 

“Did she? Ha! Well, it’s a little late for remorse. My people had to run for their lives, scattered across the Nine Realms just to survive another day and prevent the total extinction of the Jotnar. But we are regrouping, and we are stronger than ever. Our experiences outside Jotunheim have made us tougher, faster, and more determined than ever. They believed us monsters before, but they have  _ no idea _ . They’ve never had a day’s privation in their golden lives. Up here in this glittering cloud city they lord it over the Nine and pretend benevolence, but it’s all a façade to cover the decay inside.” 

A thick, stinging clot of tears threatened to choke Sol. It was hard for her to reconcile the peaceful, majestic beauty of Asgard with the horrors Fenrir was uncovering for her. She felt as if she were watching a glorious work of art being ripped apart to show rot and mildew lurking under its richly coloured paint. 

His mouth sneered, showing a flash of sharp fangs. “Are you going to weep for the Jotnar now? Or are you weeping for your lost vision of these  _ good people _ you love so much? Either way, don’t waste your tears. A storm is coming, and even you, with your  _ seiðr,  _ cannot withstand it. It will wash away the gild and the decay and start anew.” 

“Maybe I’m weeping for both.” Sol turned away from him, trying to compose herself. “I imagine you know how it feels to have your illusions shattered, and realize that your perception of something as ‘good’ is really just as flawed as everything else? And what about those who don’t deserve this storm that is coming? What about the innocent people your storm threatens?” 

She faced Fenrir again, walking up to the invisible barrier and standing so close that it started to shimmer and spark gold in warning. The sneer on his face was gone, replaced by something like cold, solemn anger. “There is no such thing as innocence in a society built on subjugation and death.” 

Sol dipped her head in acknowledgment. “I understand. But there may be some who don’t know. On my world too, there are systems built on oppression, and nobody who is part of those systems can be considered free from guilt,  _ but _ … the people who are in charge of things are good at hiding their crimes, and some in the system have never had the opportunity to learn the truth. Could you justify their deaths? Don’t they deserve to be shown the truth and given a chance to fight the powers themselves?” 

He seemed to be considering, just for one brief moment. Then his jaw tightened. “It is too late for that. You should return to your world before the storm breaks.” 

“I can’t leave him, and he won’t leave his mother.” Sol knew she didn’t have to explain who she meant.

The sneer was back, twisting his marble-chiseled face into something ugly and contemptuous. “He left  _ my _ mother.” 

“If you had one more chance to see your mother again, to be with her and talk to her, would  _ you _ give it up?” 

His eyes widened and for a moment he forgot to be bitter. “No,” he admitted, in a softer voice. “I am not sure that I  _ could _ .”

She suddenly felt a tug of sympathy for him. “Can’t the storm be stopped? Can’t we all come to some kind of solution that won’t involve more death? On my world -”

He cut her off with a growl. “Your world knows nothing. It has become so detached, so isolated, so insular and unconcerned with anything beyond its own material shores. You think it’s just my people that will bring the storm? There is not a corner of the Nine left that has not suffered beneath Asgard’s benevolent heel. This is so much bigger than you realize or could ever understand.” 

“What I was about to say was that I understand your desire for revenge, but Earth hasn’t been all roses and sunshine, you know. Humans … well, we’re not very good at learning from the past. We’ve done a lot of awful things to each other, and we’re still doing a lot of awful things, but one thing I do know is that if you go in fighting it will just end up in more war, more death, more suffering, and it will never end.” 

He clamped his mouth shut and shook his head, almost regretfully. 

“Can’t something be done to stop the storm from breaking just yet?” 

“You want me to  _ talk _ , to  _ discuss _ the terms of my vengeance. That is not how things are done in Ironwood, or in Asgard either. Revenge is like a living thing, a wild creature that has to be wrestled and seized before it bites you. You can’t sit and reason with it any more than you can reason with the Aesir. Odin was so blinkered by his hatred that he could not conceive of a cosmos in which my people could be respected equals and not inferior enemies to be conquered and wiped out. Thor is too desperate to live up to what his father left behind; he would never agree to talk, even if I did.” 

Sol wanted to disagree, to cling to a tiny belief that he could be mistaken, but Frigga’s voice echoed in her head,  _ Thor must never find out who he is. It means the difference between life and death for Loki. If Thor discovers his identity, he will kill him,  _ and she knew, with harsh, blistering certainty, that Fenrir was right. Thor would not want to talk with the people he had been taught to hate and fear. 

 

*     * *     * * 

Something didn’t feel right. Loki felt foolish for this insistent realization - because honestly, how could anything feel right after you’d died, spent some time knocking about in Helheim, and come back to a healing room? - but it wouldn’t go away. The buzz in the back of his head wasn’t just a residual headache from being pulled between realms like a marionette on a string. Something was  _ wrong _ . He was really getting very tired of this feeling lately. 

He shut his eyes, trying to focus on the source of the unease. Behind his eyelids was a fantasia of swirling colours - mostly green, reflecting the power of his  _ rún  _ coursing through his body - which, if he concentrated hard enough, usually started to merge into shapes. This time the green shifted into a blinding flash of sunlight-white.  _ Sol _ . Of course it was. 

He took his opportunity when Eir stepped out of the room for a moment to speak to one of the herbalists. Within seconds he was up, weaving a careful illusion of himself lying on the bed looking suitably angelic for the benefit of the healer, and slipping out of the other set of doors before Eir had even finished giving her list of requirements to the herbalist. He had to find Sol and hope that this feeling of unease went away when he did so.

She was hard to track down. Her energy was chaotic, difficult to trace with any degree of accuracy. But she couldn’t help leaving a trail of white-hot  _ rún  _ behind her, which, if he closed his eyes, lit up almost like phosphorescent footprints. The problem was that every time he did this, it made his head spin to the point of nausea. He pushed through the increasing dizziness and followed the trail until it became obvious where Sol had gone. The unease bloomed into a mixture of disbelief, panic, and fury. By the time he reached the dungeon he was running full tilt, the fear of what he would find filling him with urgent power. 

There she was, chatting to Fenrir as calm as you please. Loki felt his chest tighten, restricting his breathing and making a sort of fog swim in his field of vision. He had known she would be here, of course, but that didn’t make actually  _ seeing _ it any better. What in the Nine did she think she was doing? 

He strode forward without really thinking. 

"I specifically told you to stay away from him!" he hissed at her. He wanted to yell, but there is only so much volume one's voice can achieve when anxiety is slowly constricting one's torso like an iron cage. 

She didn't even flinch. "I know. But I had to try." 

"Try what?" he snapped. "You know nothing of this realm!"

"I can see where you get your dismissive cynicism from," she remarked coolly to Fenrir, who merely bared his teeth in an expression halfway between a grin and a snarl. "I had to try to find out why he's doing what he's doing." 

"Because he hates me for allowing his mother to wither away in a foreign realm?"

"Hard as it may be to accept this shocking fact, not everything is about you. I mean, he  _ does  _ hate you, but he hates Asgard more because of what they've done to his people." 

"I am sitting right here," growled Fenrir.

“I never realized being a parent could be so exhausting,” said Loki, directing a quelling look at both of them. He knew his brother, even across realms, and he knew that Thor would not be letting the grass grow under his feet. Especially given his apparent paranoia about Jotunheim, he would be unlikely to assume Fenrir was alone, and that meant that even now he was undoubtedly preparing for war. Fenrir was living on borrowed time. 

“Sol, you must go back upstairs now. I have something to discuss with … my son.” 


End file.
